


The Weeping Willows

by Hyperionova



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Fae & Fairies, Fantasy, M/M, Mpreg, Romance, royal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:41:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24163789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyperionova/pseuds/Hyperionova
Summary: Jongin is the last remaining fae in this forest. But he wants nothing to change. Change is scary, change is unsafe.But one day, he stumbles upon an unexpected visitor in his forest, who will soon become everything Jongin loves and fears.During his short stay in Jongin's forest, Adrian falls in love for the first time. But he does not belong in the forest, and he most certainly does not belong in the arms of a beautiful, kind, soft-spoken fae who runs around barefooted because he does not want to hurt the earth by stepping on it.
Relationships: Kim Jongin | Kai/Adrian, Kim Jongin | Kai/Original Character(s), Kim Jongin | Kai/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 64
Kudos: 154





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Story contains some sickeningly sweet lovemaking, mpreg, infidelity, age gap (Adrian is 39, Jongin is around 24-26), size difference.

# P R O L O G U E

The forest floor, woven with roots of yore and ancient tales, is warm beneath his bare feet. He never has to be careful with his steps because the forest will never hurt him. Neither will its dwellers. Morning light filters through the canopies, and everywhere it touches, the earth graces with lush and verdant colours. Green mostly. Accompanied by little splashes of red, orange, yellow, pink and various shades of blue. The wildflowers are blooming right before his eyes, caressed by what little sunlight the forest roof allows. He stops to smell them, and they open at his touch. He then raises his hand to a tree, coaxing it to let in a little more sunlight for the flowers. He smiles at the rustling canopies of the trees and carries on.

The forest hums with life around him, feeding him with the vigour he needs to take the next step. The winds tell him that he is thrumming with excitement, and that it is a good colour on him. The branches tell him that he needs a haircut soon as they tousle his hair when he ducks under them. The singing birds on those branches greet him with a good morning and ask him if he is wearing a new tunic. Why yes, he is. He had only finished sewing it together last night with the cotton he had been spinning for the past several months ago.

He does not think he is lonely. He keeps himself entertained when the woods isn’t. Ever since Pathe died, the forest has been his sole companion, and he has never complained about it, and he never will. Because he is convinced that he is not alone. He never feels lonely. There is no reason for him to leave this forest. He is safe here. He is happy here. Nothing needs to change. Pathe has taught him everything he needs to know to get by. From spinning cotton to harvesting honey from the beehive without angering the bees. He belongs here and nowhere else. Like Pathe, he will live and die on the ground of this forest.

He tries not to think of the day he dies. He tries not to think of anything macabre in general.

Which is why when he smells the pungent, metallic stench of blood that roils the salubriousness of the forest, his knees nearly buckle.

In a rush of panic, he breaks into a sprint after dropping the basket of berries he has been so carefully collecting, and follows the ribbon of unpleasant, gruesome miasma that turns his stomach. His forest has been tainted. The winds reek of blood, too. And they are coming from the river.

The birds tag after him, and so do the fawns and wild hares. They do not only sense the perturbance but also his terror.

As he pushes past the thinning trees bestrewn near the riverbank, he anxiously looks for an injured animal. Predators do not leave their preys bleeding and wounded, and they most certainly do not drag their preys out to the river.

The morning sun is so bright, scintillating in the sky while glimmering on the rippled surface of the coursing river water, that it blinds him for a moment. And then he sees the hares hopping over to the shore.

His heart stops for a moment. Actually, everything stops. The skies and the earth. Even the river is now silent. He does not turn a hair until the wind softly howls in his ear, urging him to help the man, who has washed up on the riverbank.

Swallowing hard, he takes a cautious step forward. His heart has started beating again, but now it barely takes a rest. It is all that he can hear, drumming in his ears without relenting.

The fawns step aside when he slips past them. He gently shoos the hares away as well as he lowers himself to his knees. He does not move for a long length, his unblinking eyes mustering the horror that is lain out before him.

It is nothing like he has ever seen before. He is terrified. He is confused. Yet, he is very… curious.

The blood makes his head spin. And it is everywhere.

And underneath all that blood is a man, heavily wounded and wet from the river. He is breathing, but he is not doing anything else. He is covered in cuts, but there is only one that is making him bleed so much. He is a lot bigger than Jongin is, so there is no way Jongin can carry him back to the grotto on his own. He glances back at the trees and waits until a stag promptly emerges.

* * *

There is so much pain, and Adrian does not even know where they are coming from. Perhaps from everywhere. Yes, that is probably it. He supposes that this is what dying feels like, full of pain and helplessness.

And then something warm and gentle touches a side of face. It accidentally grazes a cut on his cheek, so he draws in a sharp breath. The back of his eyelids is a bright, fervent orange. He can smell nothing but the stench of his own blood. He tries cracking his eyes open.

He is met with a blinding brightness that almost pains his eyes. He wants to shut them immediately, but then he discerns the blurry image of a… boy.

With a pair of pointy ears and the most worried set of brown eyes Adrian has ever seen.

He must either be dreaming or hallucinating from all the pain. Or he is already dead, and an angel is here to take him away to heaven. That is bollocks because he is very certain that angels and heaven would want nothing to do with him.

The pain. Ah, yes, the pain. He takes another blurry look at the figure that is looming over him before he lets the pain knock him out again.

“Hold on,” he hears a very distant voice. It is almost an echo, and it is a voice he has never heard before. But it feels like a lullaby.

* * *

He has brilliant hazel eyes though bloodshot, Jongin had realized when he had opened them for a heartbeat. He makes sure that the wounded man does not fall off the back of the stag as they make their way to his grotto.

Pathe had taught him everything he needs to know to get by. But he had not taught Jongin how to save a dying man from his wounds. A very deep one in particular.

As soon as they reach the grotto, Jongin tries to drag the man off the stag with all his might and lays him next to the fire. Some of the forest animals have tagged along.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jongin mutters to himself as he hurries to fetch a cloth and a bowl of spring water in the grotto. He then leaves the water to boil over the fire while he turns to the man again.

He hasn’t moved again. His breathing is shallowing, and it alarms Jongin.

He surveys the man’s bloodied attire. Fortunately, he is not wearing too many layers. Just a shirt and a pair of thick trousers. Ripping the shirt open with a lot of reluctance, Jongin gasps, shocked by the morbidity that is revealed to him.

The man’s lower abdomen has been punctured with something sharp and lean. It was no boar or stag, Jongin knows that for certain. The wound is not wide, but it is deep. Unless he finds a way to close it and stop the bleeding, this man will not live through the morning. Luckily, Jongin has had some experience treating wounded animals. And the man did not look all that different from an animal. He is huge and very heavily muscled. How did he even get so hurt? There is no time to be wondering.

Jongin jumps up to his feet and runs out of the grotto. The forest will help him. He will not let this stranger die today.


	2. Chapter 2

# C H A P T E R O N E

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he mutters to himself, or to the fawn that is sniffing the dark, greenish, thick simple on the wounds, or perhaps even to the man lying unconscious in the middle of Jongin’s hut in the grotto.

It has been a long day, and it has yet to come to an end.

What is he even doing? He finds a wounded man by the river and drags him back to his home to nurse the man back to health? It is the most dangerous, strangest, most reckless thing Jongin has ever done in all of his life. He cannot think of anything more ill-considered.

But still. Leaving the man to die out there was simply out of the question. Jongin, though scared and frankly struck with horror, could never leave someone helpless to die. Pathe would not have. If he had been that kind of fae, Jongin would have died as a child.

He glances back at the stranger, whose breathing is steady as his chest rises and falls at a relaxed pace from where he is lying–on Pathe’s bed that has been cold for moons. Jongin has not yet found the heart to get rid of Pathe’s belongings, even though every reminder of the wise old fae stings him a little.

But he was taught to accept death. It is part of nature. It is part of life. No one can argue with death. It is inevitable. It is necessary for the equilibrium of all things. Death comes to all. One must learn to embrace impermanence. When Pathe’s time came, he took Jongin’s hand and reminded him to not to grieve over his departure. A fae’s tear is a bane to the trees. It brings despair to the soil. It sorrows the wind. It wounds the river. The pain is suffered by all. So, Pathe advised Jongin to never shed his tears unnecessarily. Faes shall only mourn in silence for every fallen tree, for every lamented animal of the woods, for every loss of a loved one. Pathe did not want Jongin to ever cry in grief. His smile is what breathes life into the forest. Without it, the forest might wilt. Jongin had made him a promise that he would never let anything harrow him.

He has cleaned all the blood and wounds thoroughly. He has treated the injuries that he could see, and since he does not see any blood seeping through the man’s trousers, he does not dare take them off.

Now that all that blood has been wiped away, Jongin is able to discern the man’s face more clearly now. Not that it helps much. Most of the man’s face is still covered in beard and scars. He tries not to stare at it for too long as he hurries to fetch some hot water. Earlier, he had stitched the gnarly wound at the lower abdomen up with the needle and thread he uses to sew sackcloth. It nearly made him sick. And after, he had applied some of the simple he had made with medicinal roots, herbs and tree sap.

Jongin gently shoos the baby chipmunk that is sitting in the bowl away before he fills it with some hot water. He then returns to the man and kneels at his side. Wetting the cloth, he licks his lips and surveys the man once more. His eyes are completely unmoving. Not a single flutter. His lips are chapped and pale. He has nice rows of long eyelashes. His jawline is visibly strong and sharp, even under his thick blanket of beard. There are small, old scars on his forehead and cheeks, though they are only noticeable when one is close enough. And Jongin is more than close enough.

He pulls back.

The man is human, no doubt. A man. Not a fae. But he does not look ordinary. There is something about him that makes Jongin stop in his tracks and take a second look.

“What are you doing here, so far from home?” Jongin is now talking to the man, not expecting an answer. He knows for a fact that there is no human civilization anywhere near this forest. It is at least a two-week walk to the nearest human village. Not that Jongin has ever been to one.

He has encountered some human hunters, who come to his forest once in a blue moon during hunting season. They are cruel men. They mercilessly kill the animals in the forest for sport and brim with pride when they fall the majestic beasts of the woods. Some of them even laugh when they get one!

Pathe told Jongin to steer clear of them. If they saw _him_ , they’d do a lot worse, he said. And Jongin knows that Pathe was right.

That be it, Pathe also told him that not all of them are cruel.

Jongin wonders which one of the two kinds this man before him might be.

He brings the damp towel to the man’s head and presses lightly. Does he have a name, Jongin wonders. Of course, he would. What could it be? There is no way Jongin can know for as long as the man remains unconscious. So, for now, he decides that he will address the man as… the man.

His skin is too hot to the touch. Jongin sighs, setting the towel aside. He ought to gather feverfews to brew some tea to lessen the man’s fever.

“Keep an eye on him for me,” he tells the rabbits before he grabs his cloak and basket and wends his way out of the grotto again.

* * *

When he returns with a basket full of feverfew flowers, the rabbits have curled up next to the man, sharing his warmth. Jongin quickly plucks the flowers from their stems and adds them to a kettle of water before hanging it over the fire.

It is already dark outside the grotto. Jongin isn’t sure that the man would rouse anytime soon. But if he survives the night, then there is a high possibility that he might make it.

He kneels next to the man with a cup of feverfew tea in his hand. He grunts softly as he tries to lift the man’s head and settle it on his lap. Cradling the head in an arm, Jongin carefully tipped the cup and tried to slip the tea into the man’s mouth.

He does not succeed. He frowns as the tea dribbles down the corner of the man’s tightly sealed lips. Placing the head on his lap again, Jongin takes hold of the man’s jaw in a hand and forced his mouth open. He slowly decants a few drops of the tea in and released his grip on the man’s jaw, a thumb wiping away a rivulet from the man’s lower lip.

As he pulls his hand away, his hand strokes the man’s beard, and he pauses to take another good look at the man’s face. He then gently cards his fingers through the man’s hair a few times before he realizes what he is doing.

He sets the man back on the pillow and rises to his feet. He isn’t sure why his face is burning. Probably because he has never touched a man before. Especially not like that. He has never even dreamed of encountering one, let alone hold one’s head on his lap.

He glances back at the sleeping man once before he proceeds to get rid of the bloodied rags.

* * *

He does not catch a wink that night. He has to stay up to watch over the man, to make sure that his fever is going down and his wounds are healing. And while he watches the man from his own pallet, he wonders where the man might hail from. Who is he? How did he get so hurt? Who or what had hurt him? What was he doing here?

If Pathe were here, he would tell Jongin to stamp out his curiosity. It is not good for one to be so curious, especially about things that are not part of the forest. And this man is certainly not a part of the forest. He reeks of human civilization. He reeks of mortality.

Jongin beseeches the forest to save this man, nonetheless. And later, he asks himself what if this is a bad idea? What if the man is not harmless? What if he is wicked?

Jongin refuses to believe that even men, as greedy and unkind as they are, would be so dishonourable that they would harm the one who saved their life.

He tries not to think about it right now. For the time being, he only wishes for the man to pull through the night and survive. He will get his answers once the man awakes, he supposes.

He gently strokes the fur of the chipmunk that has curled up with him on the pallet while keeping his eyes on the man. He has a _man_ not only in his forest, but in his home! And for now, the man is harmless.

* * *

His back is resting on something flat but soft. It is comfortable. God, it is more than comfortable. Unfortunately, it is the only thing that is offering him any form of comfort. Everything else is either numb or in pain.

He smells something. Something foul. Something that reminds him of the infirmary back home. He wonders if he is covered in it. He tries opening his eyes next, and it is nearly impossible.

But he manages to force an eye open. His vision is so foggy that he thinks he could see even less than when he had his eyes closed. He turns his head and drowsily looks at the blurry moving figure. It is a boy, he thinks. Of some sort. He is kneeling before a pot that is suspended over a small fire, throwing some leaves into the pot.

Adrian slowly shuts his eyes again, opting for the oblivion than the pain.

* * *

The man’s breathing is steady. His skin does not burn as hot as it did last night when Jongin touches the man’s forehead with a hand. It pleases Jongin. He must be doing it right, then.

He tries waking the man up a couple of times, but it is to no avail. Some of the forest animals have come by today too to check on the anomaly that has irrupted into their home.

Jongin momentarily leaves the man’s side to gather some more ingredients for medicinal teas and simples. He knows where everything is in the forest. And even if he forgets, the forest or the wind would remind him.

He tells the wind to carry his apology to the willow tree for not being able to visit her today. He needs to be by the wounded man’s side at all times to nurse him back to health.

* * *

An unstinting hunger finally rouses him to his full consciousness. He thinks it is night-time because all that he can see for a moment is black. Then in the dark, he spots a faint brightness that might have been the labour of a candle. Where is he?!

He jolts upright with a gasp and quickly inspects his body when a stabbing pain nearly knocks him out once again. There is a patch of something green, which resembled a simple, on his lower abdomen, where most of the pain is spawning from. He thinks of touching it before his attention promptly shifts when he hears something shuffling in a corner of the room. He freezes.

* * *

Jongin is nearly asleep when he hears the man stir before sitting up in a panic. It nearly stops Jongin’s heart.

Carefully, Jongin pushes himself up, too. He is afraid that the silence of the grotto might expose how fast and hard his heartbeat is right now. The man stops and turns to him, his face full of shock and confusion. Then it is nothing but a blank slate.

They do nothing for a very long moment, though neither looks away. Jongin is holding his breath, and he suspects the man is, too. He needs to be incredibly cautious. Just like when he is faced with a feral animal. In order to tame it, he must first demonstrate his helpful intentions. Next, he must convince the animal that he can be trusted.

He swallows the lump in his throat and blinks at the man. A wild beast might be easier to approach than a man.

“It’s all right,” he says at length. He speaks the common tongue. Pathe had taught him. Pathe had taught him everything he knows.

He watches the man’s eyes bulge out in something akin to surprise. Licking his lips, Jongin shifts onto his knees.

“I will not hurt you,” he tries to be reassuring, hoping to abate the man’s doubts and panic. He sees the man’s expression twist then almost into an amused grimace. “You are safe now.”

Jongin crawls out of his pallet and slowly approaches the man, who flinches every time Jongin makes a movement.

“Can you speak?” asks Jongin, sitting back on the heels of his feet when he decides that he is close enough. The man does not respond. He continues to gawk at Jongin in disbelief, curiosity, and fatigue. Perhaps he cannot speak. Jongin bites his lower lip for a moment. “Can you understand what I’m saying?”

Perhaps the man does not speak the common tongue. Perhaps he is not from around here. Perhaps he does not know how to speak.

Jongin raises a hand and carefully brings it to the man’s forearm. His touch always calms even the fiercest of animals. But the man yanks his arm away before Jongin could even touch him.

Frowning, Jongin retrieves his hand and lowers his head for a moment. “You must be confused,” he says without meeting the man’s overwhelming gaze. “And afraid.”

There is another stretch of silence between them, although the silence is quavering with the heavy, laboured breathing of the man.

Jongin eventually raises his head again and blinks at the stranger. “How are you feeling?” he asks, even though he is not certain that the man can understand him.

Looking down at the wound on his lower abdomen, the man huffs heavily. “Where am I?” he asks, and Jongin’s heart skips a beat. Not only because the man’s voice is low and deep, like the low growl of a bear, but because his hostile tone is full of threat. It sends shivers down Jongin’s spine.

“My… home,” he replies quietly, diffidently. The man looks at him again with a deeper frown. Jongin finds it very difficult to meet the man’s sharp gaze, yet at the same time, he is unable to look away. The man is now staring at Jongin’s ears.

Jongin has never felt so uncomfortable. He resists the temptation to clasp his hands over his ears to cover them in embarrassment. He is also certain that the very ears the man will not stop gawping at were turning visibly red.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” he asks, hoping to divert the man’s painstaking attention.

He receives no reply once again.

The man does look away at some point as he tries to push himself up to his feet. He falls back on the pallet unsuccessfully, panting and swearing under his breath. Jongin’s ears ring a little, but he supposes profanities do not bother men as much as they do faes. Pathe used to say that humans find pleasure in the horrors of the world, while faes do so in the serenity of nature.

“You might want to rest for a while longer,” he advises, and that earns him a scowl that makes his blood run cold. He slinks back to his own pallet momentarily and frowns at the man, wondering if he might be harmful once he regains his strength.

“I _am_ hungry,” the man growls, realizing that it is a futile effort to try and stand up.

Jongin’s eyes widen in surprise, but he quickly rises to his feet and hurries to fix the man a hearty meal. He has some pottage left over. He grabs a handful of dried cloudberries and basil seeds from the shelves and adds them to the pottage. He then returns to the man and kneels before holding the bowl out.

The man eyes the pottage inquiringly for a moment.

“Here. There are herbs in here that will help you recover your strength faster,” says Jongin. “You should try and eat it all.”

After another moment of scrutiny, the man accepts the bowl. Jongin shudders when the tips of their fingers brush together. He shoots back up to his feet and hurries away to fetch the man a cup of water.

When he turns around, he finds the man sniffing the pottage with a concerned lour. Then with a heavy breath, he tips the bowl and sups the pottage straight from the bowl. Swallowing the green stew, he makes a face. It does not look like he likes the way it tastes.

Jongin tries not to take offence. After all, he does not expect men to share similar likings to faes. He hands the man the water and watches him guzzle it greedily.

Once he is done, he lets out a loud sigh and reclines back on the pallet. He falls asleep almost immediately.

Jongin stands in a corner, rubbing an elbow with a hand. He wants to say something, but he is not sure what he should say. In the end, he decides to let the man rest in silence as he quietly makes his way back to his pallet.

He stays up for most of the night, watching the man sleep.

* * *

The next time the man rouses, some colour has returned to his complexion. It relieves the distress in Jongin’s heart.

“Good morning,” he bids the man in a low voice, careful not to startle him.

Sitting up, the man rolls his shoulders and winces. He stops for a moment, head held low, and draws a few deep breaths. Jongin approaches him with a crockpot of fresh simple.

“I must minister to your wounds,” he says, kneeling at the man’s side. He is regarded with a set of perplexed, tentative amber eyes. “May I?”

He slowly and cautiously brings a hand to the man’s abdomen. He pauses and looks up to see if the man would protest. He hears no objection, so he proceeds.

This was a lot easier when the man was asleep. Now that he is conscious, Jongin finds his hand dithering and trembling as it lightly touches the layer of dried simple on the wound. As he removes it, he hears the man hiss quietly.

He withdraws his hand and frowns. “Does it hurt too much?”

The man’s eyebrows furrow into a deep scowl. “No,” he spits grouchily, as though Jongin has somehow offended him.

Curling his lower lip between his teeth, Jongin scoops up some of the cool simple and gently administered it to the cut. He hears the man hiss through his clenched teeth again. Jongin tries to keep his gaze from wandering to the man’s heaving chest.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asks, retrieving his hand as soon as he is done.

“I’d like to take a piss,” says the man crassly. Jongin rises to his full height, blushing in embarrassment.

“Oh, yes,” he mutters uncomfortably. “Of course. The outhouse is at the back.”

The man tries to push himself up, groaning and grunting in pain. Jongin thinks that he should help, but he is too afraid to go anywhere near the man again.

The man eventually manages to stand up, and he loses his balance for a moment, teetering back and crashing into Jongin’s shelves, knocking down the bottles and jars that reside there. Gasping, Jongin lurches forward and curls an arm around the bigger man, steadying him.

“Are you all right?” he asks. He receives no answer, although the man is leans heavily against him. This is an ill-thought idea.

The man is huge, and his crushing weight is more than what Jongin can bear, and Jongin is in no way a small fae himself. Not all men are as big and strong as this one, though. The sheer mass of all the muscles in this man’s body is heavier than two fully grown bucks.

Fortunately, as soon as he has found his footing, the man draws away from Jongin.

“This way,” murmurs Jongin, leading the way to the outhouse through the back of the hut. It is a small shed built next to the hut. Pathe had worked on the irrigation channel for years.

When he looks back, he finds the man standing still, glowering at the animals that scamper away from him as he wobbles past them. Then as he makes his way out of the hut, he stops to gaze up at the open and hollow ceiling of the grotto, squinting at the morning brightness.

“What is this… place?” he asks in a breathy whisper.

Jongin worries his lip, holding the loo’s door open. “It is a grotto,” he says. “It is where I live.”

And the man blinks like he has gotten some comprehension of what is going on around him.

Jongin returns to the hut as the man enters the loo. He tries to calm his heartbeat while arranging the man some breakfast. Potato soup and collards. He is sure it would be quite filling. Faes could live on nothing but fruits and leaves for months. But he knows men need something heavier.

He tries to look busy as the man enters the hut again. He has so many questions, and he is certain that the man has some of his own. But he has a difficult time bringing himself to speak. His heart has not pounded like this since he was a child. He is not sure, but he might even be sweating. Is it fear or anxiety? Perhaps he is simply just nervous. He has never had humans in such close proximity. And has never even dreamed of it. Certainly not one like this.

Perhaps the man would leave, though he is clearly not in the shape for it.

He sets back down on the pallet and glances around the hut with a worried frown. When Jongin turns to him with the food, the man fixes him with a scowl.

“What are you?” he asks, and Jongin stops dead in his tracks.

Licking his lips nervously, Jongin places the bowl on the ground next to the man and straightens back up. He then turns around and pretends that he has not heard what the man has just said.

He does not dare to look back at the man for a long time. When he finally turns again, the man has polished off the bowl down to the last drop of the soup. He is now staring at Jongin, and he looks like he is still waiting for an answer.

“Do you want more?” Jongin asks instead.

The man sighs and shakes his head. “Water,” he says curtly.

Jongin hands him a cup of water from the wooden pottle. He then keenly watches the way the thick protrusion in the man’s throat bob as he slugs the drink.

Then wiping his mouth and beard with a hand, he places the cup on the ground before reclining on the pallet. His chest is heaving lightly.

“Fuck,” he hisses, bringing a hand to the wound on his abdomen.

Jongin does not inquire if it hurts for the reason that he does not want to offend the man again. But he frowns sympathetically, wishing that there were some other way to ease the man’s pain. He supposes he could make the man some passionflower tea. It is a natural sleep remedy.

“Will you rest here for a while,” he says to the man, who looks up at him again. “I will go pick some passionflowers for you.”

The man blinks. “Passionflowers?”

“They are sedatives,” says Jongin. “They can ease the pain and help you sleep.”

He watches the man clench his jaw. “I am not pain,” he says. Jongin wonders if this is the inconceivable pride of men Pathe often talked about. They can never admit to their weakness and vulnerability. For some odd reason, it only makes Jongin regard the man with even more compassion and warmth.

He picks up the basket and pulls on his cloak nonetheless and wends his way out of the grotto.

* * *

He has to be a fae, thinks Adrian as he slowly drifts off to sleep. He has not met one in all the forty-two years he has been alive. But he has heard a great deal of the mythical beings that have gone into hiding centuries ago. They are so good at keeping out of men’s sight that no one can find them unless they reveal themselves willingly.

And this one… has revealed himself to Adrian. To save him. To help him. He has heard that faes are magical creatures. They are beautiful beyond description. And he is being proven correct.

Are there others like him? In these woods? Adrian assumes that he is still in the forest. It is where he and his hunting party were separated when they were ambushed and attacked by enemies, and where he last lost his consciousness.

Has the fae saved him for an ulterior motive? Some of the folklores describe faes as man-devouring creatures. Others speak of how the male faes could bear children and how their female counterparts murder the males to devour their hearts for youth and beauty. Adrian used to believe that they were all a bunch of hogwash if nothing else. Now, he is not so sure.

Something that beautiful and serene has to be dangerous.

* * *

The man is asleep when Jongin returns to the grotto with a basketful of passionflowers, which he quickly adds to some bubbling hot water along with a row of honeycomb.

He kneels at the man’s side and quietly watches the way the man’s chest rise and fall steadily. His gaze then lifts to the man’s face.

“He is so handsome, isn’t he?” Jongin mutters under his breath only for the baby chipmunk curled up in the pocket of his cloak to hear. He brings a hand up and very lightly strokes the side of the man’s bearded jaw with the back of his fingers, his breathing quickening a little.

The beard pricks his fingers delightfully.

What is he doing…

Retrieving his hand, he sits back on the ground and frowns. He has never seen men like him. He has never seen faes like him either. This sort of rugged beauty does not belong in this forest, yet it already feels like it would be empty without him.

Jongin hugs his knees to his chest and tilts his head at an angle, wondering what the man’s name might be. It could be something powerful. A strong name for a strong man.

And speaking of strong, Jongin has been surveying the man’s shirtless body day and night. How could anyone be built like him? His arms look like they harbour the might to crush two boulders at the same time. The thick prominent sinews of his powerfully muscled chest and back make Jongin a little embarrassed of his own lean and lanky body. And the scars… Jongin would love to know what the stories are behind those scars. The man must have been to many places. He must have seen many wondrous things. He must have fought gruesome battles to have warranted those scars. Unlike Jongin who has been sheltered in this forest all his life.

Not that he is complaining. The forest is his home. It is his family. The only family he has ever had apart from Pathe. He is a part of the forest as the forest is a part of him.

But he has always been a little curious about the world outside this forest. He has never had the courage to do anything about that curiosity, however.

But apparently, he has enough courage to bring a wounded stranger home and nurse him back to health.

He is very handsome, though. Jongin swallows, realizing that he is ogling a sleeping man. He has not ogled anyone before. Not like this.

He collects the chipmunk from his pocket and settles it in one of the crockpots on the shelves before he returns to the kettle to brew some passionflower tea.

* * *

The man rouses again as the day begins to make way for the nightfall.

Jongin stills on his pallet where he is altering Pathe’s old tunics with a needle, some threads and pieces of cotton fabric so that they would fit the big man. He figures it is probably best that the man covers up. Everything about him is too distracting.

Jongin’s nerves have calmed somehow. He is no longer as nervous about having a man in his home as he was this morning. He had spent the rest of the day cleaning his hut, restocking his supplies at home, planting some potatoes, harvesting honey, trimming his hair, and scouting for fallen trees. He would need firewood soon. A thunderstorm is coming his way, and the winds warned him that it would last a week.

He waits until the man has opened his eyes to speak. “Hey,” he says quietly.

The man winces and looks to him at once. Then with a heavy breath, he sits up and leans back against the wall, pulling the blanket around his shoulders.

“I brewed you some passionflower tea,” says Jongin. “Would you like some…?”

The man pins him with a sidelong glance. “Adrian,” he says hoarsely.

Jongin blinks.

“My name is Adrian,” adds the man, noting Jongin’s confusion.

“Oh.” Jongin sits up straighter on his own pallet, folding his legs. He keeps his head low, trying to byheart the name. Adrian. It is indeed a strong name befitting the man.

“Do _you_ … have a name?” the man, Adrian, asks at length.

Jongin lifts his head and blinks once more. “Of course, I have a name,” he says without sounding harsh.

Everyone has a name, right? And so, Adrian waits for a name. His gaze is almost piercing – it makes Jongin blush.

“It’s… Jongin,” he relents in a coy whisper.

The name feels strange on his own tongue. He realizes that he has never said his own name out loud before. Pathe gave him the name when he found Jongin as a wee fae, lost in the woods.

“That’s an unusual name,” comments Adrian.

Jongin’s eyes widen, and his cheeks redden. He hangs his head disappointedly. There is a small ache in his chest, and he is not sure why.

Regardless, his hurt must have been visible in his expression because the man quickly rectifies his remark.

“I mean, it is… a nice name,” he says. Jongin looks at him with a tender gaze. Adrian clears his throat. “I’ve just… never heard a name like that before.”

Jongin does not know what to say to that. So, he keeps mum. He has never thought much of silence until two days ago. Of course, when Pathe had just died, the silence had been deafening. But even then, the forest continued to murmur comforts into his ears every minute of the day.

This silence, however, is unsettling. Probably because there is just so much that they both want to know, yet neither could speak.

Adrian rises from the pallet and makes his way out of the hut to the loo. He limps back into the hut eventually with a wet hair and beard. Jongin hurries to get him a cloth to dry himself.

Their fingers brush again when he hands Adrian the cloth. He slowly withdraws his hand and shyly watches the man towel his hair and face. Adrian then wipes the little water rivulets that are trickling down his chest and plumps back down on the pallet with a huff.

Meanwhile, Jongin pours some pottage into a bowl. “Here you go,” he says, holding the bowl out to the man.

Adrian regards it for a length before accepting. “Thank you,” he says, and it warms Jongin’s heart.

After he has eaten, Jongin kneels on the pallet next to the man with a damp cloth and a jar of salve. “I would like clean your wound,” he says.

Adrian lets him without hesitation. He leans his head back against the wall and shuts his eyes, which Jongin appreciates. He does not think he could keep his hands steady while he is being watched.

Adrian’s eyes flash open, however, when a fawn and a couple of hares enter the hut. He frowns at them.

“Don’t worry,” says Jongin reassuringly while cleaning the last leavings of the dried simple on the man’s abdomen. The stitches are quite neat, and there isn’t any pus or infection. Jongin only hopes that the wound is healing just as well from the inside. “They are harmless.”

That earns him a grimace. “I am not afraid of little bunnies,” spits Adrian.

Jongin purses his lips. Of course, Adrian might actually be a hunter, who could have unfortunately ventured too far. A hunter who kills innocent animals for a sport. Jongin quickly shakes the thought away and returns his attention to tending to the wound.

“Perhaps you should lie down,” he says gently, hoping that it does not sound too much like a command. He does not think the man would react well to orders, and the last thing Jongin needs is to antagonize a man this big and strong in a small cramped space with not much room to run.

Much to his surprise, Adrian listens to him and lies on his back. His eyes are now on the forest animals that are crowding the room curiously. He looks a little curious himself. Or perhaps it is confusion.

Either way, Jongin takes advantage of the man’s distractedness to quickly apply the salve. But he stops for a moment after dipping his fingers into the salve in the jar. He isn’t sure why his heart is thundering right now. He looks to the man’s face. Luckily, Adrian is looking elsewhere.

He hears a small hiss when he softly touches the wound with his salved fingers. He lifts his gaze to briefly meet Adrian’s before he promptly returns it to the wound.

“It is quite deep,” he says. “You must take a few more days of rest.”

He does not hear a reply.

“Do not exert yourself too much,” he adds at length, drawing his fingertips along the edges of the wound. “If you need anything, let me know, and I will help you with it.”

“Why are you doing this?” the man asks then, and Jongin glances at him, withdrawing his hand. He frowns.

“What do you mean?”

Adrian huffs heavily and averts his gaze to the baby chipmunk that is climbing into the pocket of Jongin’s tunic, where it can stay warm and cosy.

“Rodents,” Adrian says with a crumpled expression.

Jongin flinches. “No,” he says, rising to his full height. “They are family. And they helped save you, too.”

Adrian arches a surprised eyebrow. Jongin turns his back to the man and walks over to the shelves to rinse his hands in the washbasin.

“I did not mean to offend you,” says Adrian a moment later. Jongin faces him again silently. He is not sure if he feels offended, but he would appreciate it if the man does not refer to the animals as ‘rodents’ again.

Adrian is staring at him blatantly, and Jongin realizes eventually that he is doing the same. Clearing his throat, he turns away, and Adrian sighs.

“Come on,” Jongin mutters to the animals as he ushers them out of the hut. They should return to their own families.

As the evening wears on, he sits on his pallet, trying very hard to concentrate on the sewing with Adrian glancing to him every so often. He gasps lightly when he accidentally pricks his forefinger with the sharper end of the needle. He notes the way Adrian’s head immediately perks up a little to look at him.

Sucking on the nicked tip of the finger, Jongin licks away the small blob of blood and returns to the task at hand.

“Do you live here… on your own?” inquires Adrian, breaking the silence as the night rapidly ages.

Jongin’s toes curl under the blanket. He briefly looks to Adrian and says, “Yes.”

Adrian does not ask him anything else for the rest of the night. Jongin cannot help but wonder if he has made a grave mistake by divulging to the man that he lives all on his lonesome, quite helpless and unaided, no one to run to in case he needs to call for help.

He should ask the man some questions, too. So that he would have some leverage as well.

He draws in a deep, shaky breath and lowers the tunic to his lap. When he glances to the man, he finds Adrian vacantly staring at the ceiling of the hut with an arm tucked under his head.

“Would you like some of that tea now?” Jongin asks instead. He decides that perhaps he would be safer if the man is asleep.

Adrian does not answer, but Jongin takes that as a yes and pours him a cup of the passionflower tea. Adrian drinks it all, down to the final drop before he lies back down and closes his eyes.

Jongin should let the man recover some more before asking him anything. Or he could not ask Adrian anything at all.

He collects the cup and exhales heavily. As he walks away, he hears a whispery, “Thank you.”

* * *

The sun arises with a lovely song singing the praise of the morning at the crack of dawn, orchestrated by the chiming winds, the humming bees, the chirping warblers, the rustling branches, the coursing river and the chittering critters.

Jongin is crouched on the riverbank, staring at his rippled reflection on the turbulent surface of the river. He swallows with some difficulty. He lifts a hand and lightly touches the pointy tip of his ear. An embarrassing colour quickly spreads over his cheeks.

He might even be the last of his kind for all the he knows. After Pathe, he doubts that he will ever meet another fae. Every time he queried Pathe about the existence of other faes, Pathe only told him that he did not know. He was, however, convinced that there were still others in this world, just not anywhere near them.

It might be nice to know other faes. The river slows its current then, as though to comfort him. Jongin smiles at the river and rises.

He does not return to the grotto immediately. Instead, he meanders his way to the weeping willow.

Everything about the forest is beautiful, of course. Even the cutthroat parts of it. It is all just a part of life. It is nature.

But the willow tree is beyond _enchanting_. Peaceful. Majestic, yet at the same time, humble.

Its leaves caress his cheeks as he shuffles past them with a smile etched on his face.

After losing Pathe, Jongin had spent every day for two weeks under the weeping willow. Pathe often told him that many faes tend to get bond with an element of their home, to which they are able to bind their souls. Jongin is not sure if it is true, but with the weeping willow, he feels at peace. It is what a mother’s embrace or a lover’s kiss must feel like.

He sets himself down on the soil and leans back on the trunk of the tree, sighing heavily.

The winds whisper into his ear, telling him to cheer up, and that he is looking rather dull today.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” says Jongin, wrapping his arms loosely around his legs, holding them to his chest. “I am… worried.”

The leaves of the willow tree stroke his arm.

Jongin sighs. “I have brought a man into my home,” he says. “I know that I had done it in the best of interests, but I fear for what comes next.”

He has been reckless, in spite of Pathe reminding him countless times over the years of how important it is for them to be very careful when it comes to humans.

Men are ruthless. If they come to know about the faes, they are capable of doing horrid, unspeakable things–Jongin has seen their acts of mercilessness himself a few times, though from a safe distance.

Now, he has brought one of them into his own home.

He taps his toes against the damp soil and says, “Would Pathe disapprove of my actions?”

Not even the forest can speak for a dead fae. But something tells Jongin that Pathe would not be disappointed in him for saving a man’s life. He is afraid, yes. He is aware of the danger of revealing himself to humans. He fears for the forest, for himself, of course. But he doubts that he would be able to go on living without a care in the world if he had left the man to die in vain at the river the other day.

When he lifts a hand to the weeping willow’s bark, he feels its comforting vibrations. Trees are very social beings. They communicate with one other and to all those who are a part of the forest, even long after they fall. Men do not know that when they recklessly fell these beautiful souls.

The tree tells him that he is not afraid of the man. It surprises him, and he listens attentively. The weeping willow tells him that perhaps he feels conflicted because he _isn’t_ afraid of the man, as he should be. Perhaps he already trusts the man, even from the moment he found the man washed up on the riverbank. And perhaps that is what terrifying him.

Jongin pulls away from the tree and frowns. “You are no help today,” he says then with a gentle smile. He brushes his fingers against the weeping willow’s leaves as he walks away, heading home.

He is not sure what he is expecting to find when he reaches the hut, but when he enters, his eyes dart to Adrian, who is sitting up, back leaned against the wall next to the pallet. He is inspecting the gnarly bruise on his right arm before he looks to Jongin.

“Oh,” says Jongin coyly. “You are awake. And you look better.”

Adrian licks his lips. He has some really nice lips, and it is not the first time Jongin has noticed them. They are quite full and plump, though most of them are concealed behind his thick beard.

“It must be the tea,” says Adrian, rubbing the back of his thick neck. He must have already washed up. His hair looks a little damp. He has a great head of hair, too. Like a lion’s mane, only the deepest shade of brown.

Jongin does not know if it is envy or desire that is swirling in the pit of his stomach every time he acknowledges the man’s striking features, for the reason that he is not quite familiar with either of the emotions. And he is not certain what exactly separates the two very akin emotions from one another.

He likes to think that he has not lived long enough to understand the complexity of such emotions. Besides, Pathe told him that faes are better at handling their emotions than any other intelligent creature that walks the ground.

“I picked some mayhaws and chokeberries,” says Jongin. “Do you like preserves on your nuts?”

Adrian stiffens, his eyes bulging. He is gawking at Jongin like the latter has said something either stupid or shocking. Jongin blinks back at him, scooping a handful of nuts from the basket.

“I have black walnuts and beechnuts,” he says.

“Oh,” lets out Adrian, his expression turning into something more amusing now. Jongin thinks the man is even smirking a little. “Sure.”

Jongin gets to preparing their breakfast at once. The whole time, he could feel the man’s piercing gaze on the back of his head.

“Is this what you eat every day?” he asks after a long while. Jongin looks up from the mayhaws that are stewing in the pot along with a generous amount of honey. There is an edge to the man’s tone. Jongin is not sure what to make of it. He has not talked to enough people to recognize condescension or mockery. Even when Pathe were at times flustered with Jongin, the old fae never treated Jongin with confusing criticism.

“Not every day,” says Jongin innocently. “Only when they are in season.”

Adrian’s brows furrow. “No,” he says. Jongin tilts his head curiously. “I mean, do you only eat… fruits and leaves and nuts?”

Oh… Jongin does not know if the man is genuinely curious, or if he is just poking fun at someone who does not know any better, like the human hunters did when they shot down a baby fawn with their bows and arrows.

But he answers with sincerity as always. “I eat what the forest gives me,” he says.

“So, why don’t you eat the rabbits?” asks Adrian. He actually does sound genuinely curious now.

Jongin pulls a distressed face, turning back to the pot to stir the bubbling confiture with a wooden ladle. “I said, I eat what the forest _gives_ me. Not what I take from it.”

Adrian is silent again. Jongin wonders if his own tone now mimicked the one the man had used earlier. And it makes his stomach tremble.

He is worried that the man’s gaze is now on his pointy ears. He wants to hide them. Not because he is afraid of being discovered, but because the thought of Adrian staring at them so blatantly leaves him so flushed that not even his slightly bronze skin could hide.

He only turns around once he has stored the preserves in their respective jars. With much hesitation, he meets the man’s widely awake eyes. The last couple of days, Jongin has only seen them while they were drowning in fatigue and drowsiness.

Now that they are bright and awake, he has a hard time looking at them. They look so sharp and cold.

He swallows and says, “How are you feeling today?”

Adrian takes a moment to answer as he looks down at his wound. “I do not think even the physicians back home could have done such a good job,” he says.

Jongin’s lips part, drawing in a sharp breath. His cheeks grow hotter. Is that a compliment? He lowers his head modestly and says, “It must be the simples and the salves.”

Adrian is staring at him again. “Could be,” he says. “But it isn’t all.”

Does he mean to say it is Jongin’s personal touch? Does he mean to imply that Jongin is something peculiar?

It is the first time the man has spoken of his _home_. Where is it? How far is it? Why has he come so far away from it?

As much as Jongin wants to know so much and almost everything about the stranger, he turns to fix their bowls. Once he is done, he walks over to the pallets and hands Adrian one of the bowls.

Accepting it, the man sniffs its content. “Smells sweet,” he comments. He quite chatty, Jongin realizes. Chattier than he had expected.

He smiles and settles on his own pallet, facing the man. They eat in silence.

Adrian finishes his food long before Jongin. It is quite impressive how fast he eats. Is he that hungry, or is it just habit? Jongin isn’t sure the man even chews his food. But even then, there is some grace to his rush. He lowers the bowl and proceeds to watch Jongin, who takes his time with his meal. And he never looks away.

Jongin tries to keep his eyes and head low, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for him to swallow his food.

“Have you lived here all your life?” asks Adrian at length.

Without bringing his head up, Jongin nods it slowly. He thinks Adrian might ask more questions, but he does not. He does not fall back asleep either.

Much later, Jongin picks up a jar of salve and turns to the man nervously. Adrian looks lost in his own thoughts, his eyebrows knotted with both worry and anger.

“May I?” asks Jongin before approaching the man.

Adrian bows his head, but he does not recline. Instead, he opens his knees and straightens up.

Jongin kneels between the man’s legs and dips his fingers into the thick, warm liquid. His heart is thumping fiercely against his chest. He quickly applies a thin layer of salve on the rapidly healing wound and withdraws. Before he rises from the pallet, however, he stops to meet Adrian’s eyes that are glowering at him painstakingly.

He is terrifying up close.

* * *

# C H A P T E R T W O

He is bewitching, thinks Adrian.

His slender, oiled-up fingers stroke a side of Adrian’s abdomen with a gentleness unknown to him. It puts a lump in his throat.

He has heard so much about the beauty of faes. Corrupting. Beguiling. A curse to mankind.

He thinks he is still asleep, dreaming of something so beautiful that it cannot exist out of the realm of dreams.

Do all faes smell like honey and berries? Like rain and loam? It is overwhelming. It is consuming Adrian. It might be why the hunting hounds can never pick up the scent of faes. They smell like the forest. Better.

The pointed tip of his ears are always pink. As are his lips and fingertips. The rest of him is soft tan and cream.

Adrian should leave. He is able to walk now. He should go. There is much to take care of back home. His absence must be causing an uproar. But the peace he has woken up in right now is much too irresistible.

He tries not to flinch every time the boy’s fingers touch his cut. The fringes of his eyes are long and beautiful, like a girl’s. Better than a girl’s. His lips look like petals and pillows, curved like two bows. And every time they part, Adrian has a hard time looking away.

There is a shimmer to his dark hair, which he wears in a fairly short and neat fashion. Adrian expected faes to walk around in long braids. Not that this is any less enchanting. Adrian fights to urge to run his fingers through the boy’s silky strands.

If a servant boy back at home looks like this, Adrian would take him in a heartbeat, regardless of whether he has a part of his abdomen punctured. Not that he has taken many servant boys, or girls for that matter, to bed, but how could any virile man, even those who do not usually swing that way, resist a beauty like this?

But this is a fae. A creature of the legends. Potentially perilous. What if it has been feeding Adrian with poison? Or potions that is making him think these foul things?

When the boy looks up, he stops to regard Adrian’s eyes. His embarrassed gaze does not linger, however. He hurriedly rises from the pallet and turns away.

Bewitching.

* * *

Two more days pass, and Jongin is beginning to get used to having someone sleep on the pallet next to him again. Adrian’s heavy breathing and soft snores at night are more pleasant and comforting than he wants them to be.

He stays up for the better part of the night to watch the man sleep. And during the days, he stays away from the hut as much as possible, fearing Adrian’s questions.

At the same time, he wants nothing more than to hear the man talk. The silence is a little more than overbearing when it is just them in the hut, stealing glances every so often without saying much. Besides, the sureness in Adrian’s gruff voice every time he speaks is delightful to hear. It does not quaver like Jongin’s. He does not stutter, he does not fumble. He speaks with a confidence that both excites and terrifies Jongin.

Before they go to sleep that night, Jongin holds out the finished tunic to Adrian. “You can wear this,” he says, blushing. “It is about to get cold. There is a storm coming our way.”

Adrian accepts the tunic and inspects it quietly for a moment. He then looks at Jongin and says, “Is this yours?”

Jongin pauses for a moment as his heart sinks at the memory of Pathe. “No,” he says, head hung. “It is someone else’s. He is not… with us anymore.”

What Adrian says then shocks Jongin. “I am sorry.”

And it sounds so sincere.

Jongin swallows and lets his gaze bore into Adrian’s for a while before he averts it, biting the inside of his cheek.

“So,” Adrian says at length. “you haven’t been living here on your own the entire time?”

Jongin shakes his head. “I lived with someone who was like a father to me,” he says carefully. He tries not to let his sorrow show. “And you do not have to be sorry. I should not be upset. He lived a good life. He was kind to all. I should not dishonour him by holding his memories in grief.”

Adrian shifts on his pallet to face Jongin properly. He is frowning. He lifts a hand, as though to reach past the narrow space between their pallets, but he decides against it and lets his hand fall to his lap again.

“It is okay to mourn,” he says earnestly. Jongin blinks at him. “The pain of losing someone you love… brings its own peace. It hurts when you lose someone. But that is how you know the… affection was real.”

Jongin has not thought of it that way. Perhaps that is how humans process grief. They see the beauty in the ugly.

He wonders if Adrian has ever lost someone he loved. He does not dare ask, just as how he does not dare ask the hundred questions he wishes to ask the man.

“Thank you for this,” Adrian says a moment later, holding the tunic up. Jongin nods his head and musters a small smile.

They talk some more before they fall asleep. Adrian asks him why the hut is built inside a grotto. Jongin tells him that Pathe wanted it to be as well hidden as possible, and when Adrian asks him what they were hiding from, Jongin simply tells him, “Bears. They sometimes wander too far from the mountains.”

* * *

The next morning brings Jongin a surprise. He rouses to Adrian, who enters the hut through the backdoor, smelling like spring water, the sandalwood oil and lye soap from the outhouse. He is wearing the tunic Jongin gave him. His trousers are still stained with blood and dirt. Jongin will alter some of Pathe’s old trousers to fit the man later tonight.

Adrian looks refreshed. His beard is growing. The bruises on his body are fading. The smaller cuts have completely closed up. The big one on his belly is nearly healed.

“I took a bath, if you don’t mind,” he says as Jongin sits up and pushes the blanket aside.

“I do not,” mutters Jongin. “In fact, I appreciate it.”

Adrian stops in his tracks and blinks at Jongin, who is regretting the wisecracking already. But then a corner of the man’s lips quirk into an amused simper.

It makes Jongin smile, too. When he returns from the outhouse, Adrian is standing up, dithering by the front door. He stops and turns to look at Jongin, who is towelling his hair.

“Are you hungry?” asks Jongin, glancing to the shelves to see if he could whip something up for the man before he leaves. He doubts berries, leaves and pottage are enough for a man that size, but it is all that he can manage. He has not heard Adrian complain so far, though.

“Where are you off to?” Adrian asks instead.

Jongin stares at him for a moment. “I must gather wood for the fire. Before the storm comes.”

It is what has kept him busy the last couple of days. And it is no easy task. When Pathe was alive, he did most of the wood-chopping. At least until he was able. Jongin tries his best, but it takes him hours to chop a log in half.

“Can I come along?” asks Adrian.

Jongin does not know what to say at first. The request makes his chest fuzzy, and he does not think he has the heart to refuse. Besides, he can imagine that Adrian would want some fresh air and sunlight after nearly a week of being holed up in the grotto.

“Of course,” he says when he finds his voice.

He finds a spare cloak and hands it to Adrian.

Later, they make their way out of the grotto. Jongin tells Adrian to watch his step, but he does not think Adrian is listening.

He is gawking at the grotto walls. At the glow worms and the hollowed roof of the grotto. At the lush mosses and the water dripping into the pond.

He looks mesmerized. Jongin takes a little pride in that. It is the first time he has ever seen that look on a man’s face. The look of awe. This is nothing compared to what the forest really has to offer. And Jongin wants to show Adrian all of it. Show him that it is not just a hunting or logging ground for the men.

As soon as they are out of the grotto, a sickening anxiety knots Jongin’s stomach. He glances back at Adrian again, wondering if he would decide to leave. Jongin will not stop him, of course. He has no reason to stop the man from going home now that he is able to.

Still, the thought of it somehow unsettles Jongin, and he does not understand why.

Adrian squints at the vast expanse of bright green that bombards him the instant they step outside. He then gazes up at the morning sky, as though to greet the sun with an unpleasant, grouchy lour.

He sucks in a deep breath and gazes toward the distant mountains.

“This way,” says Jongin, starting for the fallen tree’s spot.

“Can I ask you something?” says Adrian as he follows in Jongin’s footsteps.

“Yes.”

“Do you never wear shoes?”

Jongin stops and looks back to him with a smile. “No. The forest would never hurt me.” He proceeds forward again, ignoring Adrian’s sceptical reaction.

“You speak of the forest as if it is alive,” he remarks.

Halting again, Jongin lowers the axe to the ground and faces Adrian again. “It _is_ alive,” he says as a matter-of-factly, blinking.

Adrian arches an eyebrow.

Sighing, Jongin steps toward a tree. He raises a hand and touches its bark, greeting it with a gentle smile before he presses a side of his face against the trunk, shutting his eyes.

“They are all alive,” he whispers, listening to the lulling thrum of the tree. It bids him hello and tells him to stay inside and warm in the coming days.

When he opens his eyes again, Adrian is staring at him with a clenched jaw like he is witnessing a madman doing something beyond ridiculous.

Jongin pulls away from the tree and frowns. “You must think I am foolish.”

Adrian does not say anything, but his grimace softens into something sympathetic. Exhaling heavily, Jongin picks the axe back up and walks away.

“Can I ask you something else?” he asks after a moment.

Sighing, Jongin says, “Of course.”

“If you think the forest is alive and that you do not… _take_ anything from it, why are you chopping the trees down for your fire?”

Jongin lets out a soft chuckle then that makes Adrian’s eyes narrow. “I only take what the forest gives,” he says again. “I take wood from a fallen tree. I do not cut them down.”

“Oh.” He does not look apologetic. Jongin does not mind.

He does mind, greatly, the way Adrian is trampling the ferns with his heavy, ungraceful stomps. He does not tell Adrian to watch where he steps, though. He will apologize to the ferns later.

When they reach the fallen tree, Jongin collects the wood he has managed to chop up yesterday and piles them in one place. He then grabs the axe again to start chopping for some more.

He can feel Adrian’s gaze burning a hole into his back as he messily hacks off a small part of the already abused trunk. Two swings and his shoulders are already sore.

“Do you need help?” Adrian offers a while later.

Jongin turns to him with a bead of sweat trickling down a side of his face. Yes, he needs plenty of help. But he will not ask a poorly man to exert what little strength he harbours to chop wood.

“No,” he replies. “I can manage. I do this often.”

One of Adrian’s eyebrows rises. “It does not seem like it.”

Is he poking fun at Jongin’s expense again?

But he does not offer again. Instead, he perches himself on one of the tree stumps and quietly watches Jongin pant laboriously as he toils.

* * *

“What are you doing?” Adrian asks after supper. Jongin is sitting on his pallet, stitching a pair of worn pants.

“They are for you,” he says. “Pathe was a little shorter than you, so they might come to your shins. I hope that’s all right.”

Adrian pins him with _that_ look again. He has four looks. The bewildered, amused look. The look of disbelief. The frustrated look. And the incomprehensible brooding look that Jongin cannot quite read. He is giving Jongin the third look right now.

“You do not have to do that,” he says.

Jongin smiles. “You cannot wear the same trousers for weeks.”

Something shifts in Adrian’s expression then and he looks away.

The tunic is a little snug. The way it is stretched tightly around Adrian’s arms, chest and shoulders make Jongin’s cheeks hot. Does the man how handsome he is? He is nothing like the hunters that seasonally come to the forest. He is incredibly well-groomed, even for someone sporting a full beard, mussed hair and dirty pants.

“This storm,” he says, breaking the silence once more. “How long would it last?”

“A few days,” says Jongin. “A week, perhaps.”

Adrian does not speak again.

* * *

Jongin wakes up to the sight of an empty pallet the following morning, too. Except that Adrian’s boots are gone and so is his cloak.

The immediate despondence that befalls Jongin’s heart is a little more than staggering. It feels as though he is kicked in the stomach.

He sits up with a jolt and idly stares at the empty pallet for a moment too long.

The last few days, it has been just the two of them. Even the animals have stopped coming over, noticing that Jongin is keeping someone else’s company.

The hut feels cold all of a sudden. It is then when Jongin realizes that it is the sheer heat of Adrian’s body that has been keeping him warm the past few days.

He hugs his knees to his chest and closes his eyes for a moment, battling the strange, harrowing feeling that is bubbling in his chest.

He tries to push it down. Living in the forest and with Pathe has not taught him much about despair. It is not something he tends to tackle so well.

What did he think? That the man will fall in love with the forest and stay here forever?

Jongin reminds himself once more that he does not need anyone else. He is not alone. The forest is there with him. The winds, the mountains, the river, the weeping willow, the flora, the fauna, they are all there for him.

Yet, he somehow feels cold and lonely, as he had felt when he lost Pathe. He stares at the vacant pallet again and draws a shaky breath.

He eventually pulls himself up and starts for the outhouse. He halts abruptly, however, when he hears a noise coming from the mouth of the grotto.

Curious, he hurries out of the hut.

He is not sure if it is relief or joy that overwhelms him when he catches a sight of Adrian near the opening of the grotto. He thinks those two feelings are sometimes interchangeable. Just like envy and desire.

He is shocked to find Adrian, shirtless and bathed in sweat, bearing a pile of chopped wood on his shoulder before he tosses it to the giant heap of firewood on the ground.

Jongin’s jaw falls slack. “Adrian,” he calls in a raspy breath, saying the name out loud for the first time. Yet somehow, it already feels so familiar. It is a beautiful name, too. It is the only other name, apart from Pathe, that Jongin has ever spoken of and he wants to keep chanting it like it is a prayer.

Adrian stops and turns to regard Jongin, who is walking towards him.

“What is all this?” asks Jongin, trying very hard to keep his eyes from gawking stupidly at Adrian’s heaving, sweaty chest.

Running his hand through his hair that is also damp with sweat, Adrian says, “I just thought I’d give you a hand with the chopping.”

Jongin does a poor job at hiding the flush that reddens his face then. “You… should not have,” he says. “You are still healing.”

Adrian looks down at his closed wound and flashes a faint smile that renders Jongin’s knees weak. “I have endured worse injuries.”

Jongin blinks as he hurtles after Adrian. “You have?”

“I broke my leg in a duel once when I was sixteen,” says Adrian nonchalantly as he walks away. “It did not stop me from picking myself back up and limping back into the duel.”

Jongin has no way of telling if the man is just making up stories, but he has no trouble believing it, given how ridiculously massive and powerful Adrian’s body is.

He does not try hard to keep his eyes to himself as they ogle the taut muscles on Adrian’s sweat-slicked back. Impressive. So very impressive. Jongin sighs. Even the fading scars on the man’s back are intriguing.

“Did you… win the duel?” he asks.

He hears Adrian snort with amusement. “Of course.” He stops briefly to glance back at Jongin, pinning him with a smirk. Jongin quickly averts his gaze.

Adrian chopping wood is a spectacle like no other.

Over the years, Jongin has witnessed a number of wonders in the forest. But none has ever been this breath-taking. He highly doubts he looks half as mesmerizing when he is chopping wood.

Even the way Adrian wields the axe is magnificent. Every time his huge, callused hands grip the axe’s handle, the veins on his arms and neck swell and jut out beneath his dark skin.

And each blow sounds like a thunder that breaks the silence of the forest.

“Please, do not exhaust yourself,” Jongin says worriedly as Adrian lifts the axe again before driving its head into another block of wood, halving it with a single strike. As much as Jongin is enjoying the scenery, he does not want Adrian to hurt himself.

By noon, Adrian has chopped Jongin all the firewood he needs for two moons. They do not return to the hut, however.

Jongin settles on the stump beside Adrian and hands him one of the bowls of pottage as the sun sits comfortably at its highest point. They sit in silence for a moment, filling their hungry bellies.

Adrian looks a little tired, but he is smiling. Jongin wonders if labouring, hard work is what brings men like Adrian relief and pleasure.

Lowering the bowl to his lap, Jongin mutters, “I… thought you had left.”

Though he keeps his head hung, he knows that Adrian turns to look at him with that bewildered look of his. He half-expects Adrian to reply, but he does not.

Instead, Adrian looks away again and finishes the remaining portion of the pottage before he rises to his feet and collects some of the chopped wood from the ground to carry it back to the grotto.

* * *

“Have you never left these woods?” Adrian asks the next day as they make their way to the river.

Jongin shakes his head.

“Never?”

“No,” mutters Jongin.

Adrian scratches his bearded chin. “So, you do not know anyone else?”

“I know the forest.”

Adrian almost rolls his eyes, Jongin knows that look all too well now. “So, do you invite the forest over for dinner parties?”

Jongin blinks. “Dinner parties?”

“Yes. Feasts. Dancing. Music.”

Jongin has heard about them, but he does not quite know how humans do them. Probably in an excessive, extravagant way. “I dance with the wind.”

Adrian laughs, and Jongin frowns. “I’m sorry,” rectifies Adrian quickly. “I just…”

Jongin sighs. “I am happy with what I have.”

Adrian stares at him wordlessly for a length. Then very carefully, he says, “But don’t you ever want to… see what else is out there?”

Jongin licks his lips. “I know what else is out there,” he says. “Nothing good.”

“How would you know if you have never left these woods?”

He has a point, and Jongin has a difficult time finding a counterargument to that point.

When they reach the river, Adrian wastes no time removing his clothes. Jongin is not surprised by the lack of modesty in men, but _he_ is still too embarrassed to look at naked men.

So, he turns away while Adrian hurriedly undoes the laces of his trousers. Something in Jongin’s throat makes it difficult for him to swallow. He only looks back to Adrian when he hears a splash.

Adrian is happy to wash himself in the open, wide and deep stream instead of the little outhouse. Jongin crouches on the shore and distracts himself with the pebbles.

He looks away once more when Adrian climbs out of the water, running his hands through his hair to push it back.

After pulling his trousers on, he sets himself on the ground next to Jongin and loosely wraps his arms around his open knees and gazes at the other side of the river.

Jongin thinks of telling Adrian that this is where he had found the man, wounded and bleeding, but he decides against it.

The morning sunlight that is dancing between the wet strands of Adrian’s dark hair and glimmering against his bronze skin makes Jongin’s heart beat a little faster. He painstakingly watches the water rivulets that are skidding down the man’s and draws a broken breath.

“This is beautiful,” says Adrian at length. He is talking about the river and everything that surrounds it.

Jongin smiles as he watches the happy ripples on the surface. “What is?” he asks, anyway.

“This,” sighs Adrian. “Everything.” He turns his head and meets Jongin’s gaze then. He stills for a moment, as though to search for Jongin’s soul in his eyes. He then leans back on his hands and smiles at Jongin. “I never stopped to smell the roses.”

Jongin looks at him confusedly. “What do you mean?”

“Oh. It’s just an expression. I don’t… appreciate my surroundings. I am always so focused on my duties and responsibilities.” He exhales heavily. “I have never felt… so free in my life.”

Jongin’s heart blooms like it is touched by the first light of dayspring. He leans a little closer to Adrian. “I would like to show you more of it,” he says, blushing.

Adrian smiles, much to Jongin’s delight. “I would like that.”

* * *

It does not take Jongin long to figure that Adrian has a bit of a sweet tooth. He dips his finger into the pot of honey every chance he gets and grins cheekily every time Jongin catches him.

“You must help me harvest some honey tomorrow,” says Jongin, taking the honeypot from Adrian to drizzle some of the golden goodness into the slightly sour muscadines that are stewing in the pot. “At least you can reach the beehive without a ladder.”

Adrian has joined him by the fire while he cooks, just like he has the last couple of evenings. “You harvest your own honey?” he asks in surprise. “Of course, you do. It’s not like you have a general store around here.”

Jongin has grown quite fond of Adrian’s quips. Sometimes, he does not understand them, but most of the time, they make him smile.

At night, before they go to sleep, they talk a little more. They talk about the forest. They talk about Jongin. They rarely talk about Adrian.

But tonight, they do.

Even though Jongin has so many questions nagging at him about Adrian, he has not mustered the courage to find the answers to those queries, fearing that they may reveal something about the man that might ruin everything. And Jongin likes how things have been lately. He likes everything that he already knows about Adrian, and he would like to keep it this way for as long as he could.

It is Adrian who speaks first that night as the candleflame flickers in a corner of the hut.

“I am from the capital,” says Adrian, even though Jongin hasn’t asked. “It is not as beautiful as your forest, but there are a lot of wondrous things there, too.”

Jongin shifts on his pallet, so that he can look at Adrian comfortably. “Like what?” he asks.

Adrian searches for an answer for a moment. “Well, buildings for a start. Tall, big buildings. Full of people. There are all sorts of foods, too. Bread. Oh, the freshly baked breads.” He smiles to himself.

Jongin’s smile falters, however. Is Adrian homesick? If he is, why hasn’t he left already? Nothing and no one is stopping him from going home. Jongin will potentially be despaired, but he will not hold Adrian back if the time has come for him to return home.

Yet, he stays. Why? What else is left for him in this forest? Jongin does not dare ask. He does not want to even think about Adrian leaving.

“Breads,” says Jongin, mimicking the way Adrian has said it.

Adrian fixes him an easy smile. “It is a city full of many kinds of people,” he adds. “Some are good, some are bad.”

“How do you know which ones are good and which ones are bad?” asks Jongin.

Adrian draws a deep breath. “Well, there are systems in place. The bad people are taken to prison.”

“Prison?”

“It’s a… an institution to hold and punish the wrongdoers.”

“Punish?” Jongin sits up and cocks his head. “Who punishes them?”

Adrian hesitates to answer this question. He licks his lips and says, “The law.”

“The law,” echoes Jongin. The only law he knows of is the law of nature. But Pathe has told him about the law of men. They make the law, they reinforce the law, and they live by the law. One man answers to another man. The very idea does not sit well with Jongin.

“Yes, the law,” says Adrian.

“Who… makes your law?”

Adrian looks away then, his eyebrows furrowed lightly. “The ruler of the people. The king.”

Ah, the king. The ruler of people. Men view kings as those with divine decrees. Jongin shakes his head disapprovingly, and Adrian frowns in his way. “There should not be a man lording over others who are brought to this world by the same divine power in the universe,” he says. “All those who walk this ground are equal. A man has no power to _punish_ another for his wrongdoings.”

“There has to be someone or some… authority to keep everyone in line,” says Adrian. “Elsewise, there will be chaos.”

“Not where I live,” says Jongin. “There is nothing but peace here. And no one is lording over anybody.”

Adrian is silent for a stretch, and the silence makes Jongin slightly uncomfortable. He has his brooding look on. Then after a while, he sighs. “Men are tempted by the sins.”

Jongin stares at the man. “Sins?”

“Greed, power, lust, hubris, wrath, glory,” he says. Though Jongin understands the words, he does not think he has quite committed them. Well, at least most of them.

“Are _you_ … tempted by those sins?” he asks Adrian.

Adrian scoffs. “Of course,” he says, fixing Jongin with a glance that makes Jongin’s insides tremble. He is so close that all that he would need to do to touch Jongin is extend an arm past the gap between their pallets. “I am a man, after all.”

Jongin pulls his knees up to his chest and hugs his legs. Does that make Adrian a good man or a bad one?

Does it matter?

Jongin sits on that question for a moment. _Does it matter?_

Does it matter whether there is good or vice in Adrian’s heart? Is it too late for Jongin to change his judgment of the man? Has he already fallen too deep that he cannot climb back out?

“All men are flawed, Jongin,” says Adrian. Jongin looks at him in shock, his heart skipping a beat. He loves how beautiful and fulfilling his name sounds in Adrian’s mouth. He says it clearly like he is proud of calling Jongin by his name.

“All men,” says Jongin when he has calmed his heart again.

“All men,” replies Adrian confidently.

“How… are you flawed?” Jongin dares himself to ask. Part of him wishes that the man will not answer the question. It might be better for Jongin to be kept in the dark.

“In many ways,” says Adrian. “Even my thoughts are… wrong sometimes.” His gaze is boring into Jongin’s eyes before they drop to stare at Jongin’s parted lips. Clearing his throat, Adrian turns away.

* * *

The morning smells like impending downpour.

Jongin kneels on Adrian’s pallet with a salved hand, waiting for the man to lift his tunic, so that he can tend to the wound that is already drying into a scar.

The entire time, he feels Adrian’s gaze on him. His heart is pounding so fast, he hopes dearly that it is not loud enough for Adrian to hear.

“Does it still hurt?” Jongin asks to divert the attention.

Adrian shakes his head lightly.

“It looks healed.” As Jongin starts to retrieve his hand after applying the cooling salve that smells of mint, Adrian’s hand flies up to seize his wrist, yanking Jongin forward a little.

Blinking at the man, shocked, Jongin stops breathing for a moment. His fingers are still brushing a side of Adrian’s rock-hard abdomen, and it hurts where Adrian is gripping. Jongin pays very little mind to the discomfort, however. His attention is now on Adrian’s incredibly callused fingers that are scraping against Jongin’s unblemished skin, and the man’s blazing eyes that are glaring back at him like he is a prey.

“Adrian?” he says breathlessly, and instantly regrets it. Adrian snaps out of it and releases his wrist at once.

Jongin does not rise from the pallet immediately. When he can finally move again, he pulls away and frowns with his heart in his mouth. What did just happen? Why was Adrian looking at him like that?

As he sets the salve on the shelf, he surveys his reddened wrist where Adrian’s warm, rough fingers were just gripping. He wraps his own hand around it for a moment and sucks in a few trembling breaths.

Then when he turns to face Adrian, he finds the man to be staring at him. Jongin momentarily drops his gaze. When he looks up again, he diffidently says, “Do you want to go for a stroll before the rain falls?”

* * *

Jongin is nervous about taking Adrian to a part of the forest that is a little more personal and dearer to him. He has not even brought Pathe here. Of course, he does not own any part of the forest, but somehow, this part feels more like home than anywhere else.

The fat, grey clouds are gathering in the sky ominously, shrouding what little sun is left as the day rapidly approaches the nightfall.

The air is heavy and cold. Jongin draws the cloak tighter around his shoulders, shuddering every time the cold wind whistles at him, warning him to take shelter before it is too late.

Adrian stays close to him, which is comforting, as the storm looms forbiddingly, shaking the trees violently with the huffs and puffs of its cold breath.

The lush green of the forest is rapidly turning grey, and Jongin gazes up at the sky to implore the heavens for mercy.

When they finally arrive at the weeping willow, Adrian stops for a moment to take in the sight before him. The leaves and branches of the willow tree are swaying fiercely against the wind’s current.

“Come,” says Jongin encouragingly.

A small smile curls the corners of Adrian’s lips. He looks pleased.

They take their seats under the willow tree, and Jongin hands out some of the elderberries he has picked on their way here.

Adrian pops a couple of them into his mouth and sighs heavily. “Even the storm looks tempting from here,” he says. “Even though it really is ill-advised to be sitting under a tree during an imminent thunderstorm.” He laughs.

Jongin is blushing. He is beyond relieved and overjoyed that Adrian loves this spot. He watches the man slowly lean back against the tree and close his eyes for a moment while the wind tousles his lustrous hair.

Jongin is not thinking when he lifts a hand and gently cards it through Adrian’s hair then.

Adrian’s eyes fling open and look to him.

Startled, Jongin retrieves his hand at once. He is unable to believe what he has just done. Shamefaced, he turns away, biting his lower lip. Adrian’s hair is a little rougher than he thought it would be. But it still felt so good to touch it.

He closes his hands around his knees and tries to calm his breathing. He is grateful for the howling winds that muffle his thundering heartbeats and fast breaths.

Adrian straightens up a moment later.

Jongin jumps a little when the first lightning splits the dark sky in half before it is promptly chased by an ear-deafening thunder. “We should head back,” he says nervously.

Before he could rise to his feet, however, Adrian brings a hand up and tenderly cups Jongin’s chin to turn his face and meet his eyes. Jongin stills, though his heart continues to clamour in his chest like it wants to leap out of it.

As embarrassed and afraid as he is, he cannot bring himself to look away from Adrian’s eyes. They are not all that unreadable this time. Even though Jongin has little to no experience in this area, he knows better than anyone to listen to one’s heart when it is bared to him. And right now, Adrian’s heart is the loudest thing in the forest, even louder than the thunderbolts.

He thinks he has stopped breathing, he isn’t sure. No part of him can move in that moment. He feels like he is rooted to the ground, his face in Adrian’s hand, warmer than summer light, though it feels more like it his heart that Adrian is clutching at right now. And if Jongin pulls away now, he will inexplicably die. He does not think he has ever felt this way before. It hurts, so much. But he will not have it any other way either.

There is pleasure in the pain, and it is confusing.

He closes his eyes, though he does not know why. He feels the warmth of Adrian’s breath on his face then. He feels Adrian. He smells Adrian. And the forest is simply fading away around him.

He feels Adrian’s lips brush against his own at length, so softly, like the stroke of a songbird’s feather. His beard scrapes Jongin’s cheeks and chin, and he has nothing to complain about it.

And then it all disappears.

He opens his eyes and sees Adrian pulling away with a scowl, his eyes cold, his shoulders squared. He stands up and says, “We ought to head back.”

Jongin does not move for a long length, his heart still hammering against his ribs, though he feels very little of it. All that he could feel is the heat of Adrian’s lips that is still lingering on his, even though they were only gazing, touching at the slightest brush, before it all ended so shockingly abruptly.

He manages to push himself up, and when he tries to meet Adrian’s eyes, he realizes that the man would not look at him.

Jongin trembles at the raindrop that falls on his cheek as Adrian strides away.


	3. Chapter 3

# C H A P T E R T H R E E

The storm brings a cold and a cacophony like no other. Jongin cannot help but shudder every time the thunder strikes, shaking the grotto with it. He, however, appreciates the noise. Elsewise, the silence would have been too much to take.

Adrian has not spoken a word, and it disconcerts Jongin greatly. He would have broken the silence himself if he only could. But he has not been successful at finding his voice or the courage.

Has he misunderstood what has happened? Perhaps he is reading into things that are not there. Besides, nothing essentially happened, right? They have not crossed boundaries, have they? What boundaries, though?

Adrian does not join Jongin by the fire this time while Jongin makes dinner. He is sitting quietly on the pallet with his back and head leaned against the wall and eyes clenched shut. Is he brooding about what happened at the weeping willow, too?

Jongin remembers the cold look in the man’s eyes when he had pulled away. It puts a burning lump in his throat.

Perhaps he can pretend that nothing happened. He would rather do that than have Adrian give him the silent treatment. The past few days have been so pleasant. Jongin is not ready say goodbye to those yet. He wants to talk to Adrian until even the owls have gone to sleep. He wants to listen to Adrian’s light banters. He wants to feel the man’s warmth when they are sitting close together. He wants Adrian’s skin to brush against his every time they walk side by side.

Has he put Adrian off? Will the man treat him differently now? But it has not been Jongin’s fault, has it? He was not the one who had Adrian’s face tenderly cupped in his hand under a willow tree, brushing their lips together while a storm brewed around them.

But perhaps he had done something unknowingly to put the man off. Jongin has never felt this way. This guilt, this panic, this curious amalgam of unwanted emotions that is tugging at his heart relentlessly.

With much trepidation, he approaches Adrian with a bowl of hazelnut soup. “Adrian?” he calls in a small voice.

Without opening his eyes, Adrian curtly says, “I am not hungry. Thank you.”

It shocks Jongin a little. Adrian is never not hungry…

Perhaps everything is ruined after all. Perhaps Jongin has done something so terrible that is irreversible.

He walks away from Adrian, swallowing the sob in his throat.

He realizes that he is not hungry either. If it isn’t for the storm, he might have run out of the grotto and not returned until the shame cloud has cleared.

That is what he is feeling for the most part. Shame. Never in his unadventurous, sheltered life has he ever been this embarrassed.

He leaves the soup to get cold in the pot and adds another layer of firewood in the furnace. He stops, kneeling before the fireplace. He takes a deep breath and glances back at Adrian, who still has his eyes shut. He isn’t asleep. Jongin knows all too well what the man looks like when he is asleep.

“Whatever I did to offend you,” he says, his voice breaking as he does. Adrian’s eyes open and look at him coldly. “I am sorry.”

His pride is not so big that he is uncomfortable apologizing, even for something he does not believe is his fault. But Pathe taught him to always be better, kinder, and truer than anyone else.

And Jongin realizes that it is all that he can do in this situation. There is not much else that he can do.

Adrian’s gaze softens then, and it comforts Jongin a little. With a heavy sigh, he says, “You did not do anything to offend me.”

Jongin blinks. Adrian does not say anything more. He rises from the pallet and heads for the outhouse.

They do not speak to one another for the rest of the night, which Jongin is good with, because he does not think he wants to talk about what happened. At all.

* * *

Jongin rouses the next day, hoping that Adrian has forgotten about yesterday. Much to his dismay, however, Adrian is sitting in front of the fireplace with his arms loosely wrapped around his legs, staring vacantly into the cackling fire.

The storm has not relented since last night. Jongin briefly mourns for all the parts of the forest that have become victims of the thunderstorm already.

He sits up and rubs his eyes on the hilt of his palms before looking to Adrian again.

“I have to go,” says Adrian, even though he has not turned around to look at Jongin.

“What?” Jongin lets out, his voice nothing but a whisper. He isn’t sure Adrian can even hear it in the noise of the storm.

Adrian sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I cannot stay.”

Jongin’s throat closes around a lump. “I… I know,” he manages. Of course, Adrian has to leave. Jongin does not expect him to stay, does he? Why does his chest feel like it has a boulder sitting on top of it, then?

“But you should wait until the storm clears,” he says when he can find his voice again. “It, um… It isn’t safe.”

Adrian nods from where he is sitting, still without sparing Jongin a glance.

They go on with their days without saying much to one another. Jongin has not realized just how small the hut really is. There grotto ceiling is dripping with rainwater. Every time Jongin steps out for some air, he returns to the hut drenched.

Sometime in the evening, he settles back on the pallet and decides to do some sewing just as Adrian steps outside. He does not come back into the hut until much later in the evening.

He is wet from head to toe. Jongin tries to keep his eyes to himself while Adrian removes the completely soaked tunic and trousers. He accidentally pricks himself with the needle several times, and it is not half as painful as his teeth that are biting his lower lip so hard that it is nearly bleeding.

He only looks up again when Adrian is done towelling himself and pulling a dry pair of pants on. When he plumps on the pallet, he looks to Jongin, who is sucking on the thumb he had just pricked. He quickly pulls it out of his mouth and averts his gaze.

“It does not look like the storm is ceasing,” says Adrian then.

Jongin swallows before speaking. “It will last a few more days.”

It is hard to look at Adrian without blushing. Especially when his hair is damp and falling over his eyes, his tan skin still sheening from the dampness, his chest heaving lightly.

“You must miss your home,” says Jongin at length. He does not know why he said it because he does not particularly want to hear the reply.

Growing up, Pathe always told him that only men are selfish beings. But Jongin is being selfish right now, isn’t he? He wants Adrian to stay. He does not expect Adrian to stay, but he wants it to happen, anyway. He does not care if Adrian misses his home. He does not want to know if he does. He just wants Adrian to stay.

But he will never say it out loud.

Adrian lowers his head for a moment, drawing in a deep breath. “I should, shouldn’t I?” he says. Is it a question for Jongin? Or a reflection with himself?

“You should,” Jongin replies anyhow. “Everyone has a home to miss.”

Adrian’s lips quirk into a faint smile. “I suppose.”

On the one hand, it feels so good to talk to him again. But on the other, the sorrowing undercurrent of the conversation has Jongin’s heart aching.

He gulps and sits up straighter. “I know I will… never belong anywhere away from my home,” he says.

Adrian’s eyebrows furrow then. “You do not know that,” he says. “You have never left your home.”

“My soul belongs here, Adrian. To these woods, the trees, the soil, the rivers, the ferns, the animals, the critters. I do not know how to live anywhere else.”

Adrian shakes his head. “I beg to differ. A _place_ is not what a _home_ is.”

Jongin blinks. “What do you mean?”

“You have been teaching me so many things since I came here,” says Adrian. “Now, let me teach you something. The place does not make a home. Home is not a physical entity. It is… a feeling. And I believe that we can… make a home wherever we go. A home is… somewhere or something that makes you feel safe and comfortable and happy. It is the only thing in the world where you can be yourself and find peace. It does not have to necessarily be a forest or a city or a hut or a palace. It can be a mother’s embrace, a father’s tough love, a lover’s arms, a child’s smile… You feel like this is your home because this forest is your… family. You will always be able to be yourself here. But that does not mean you can’t find a home in some other place or… in someone else.”

Jongin has never thought of it that way. Mostly because he has not pictured him living anywhere but this forest. Pathe might have known what to say to counter Adrian’s argument, but Jongin, as young and inexperienced as he is, falls silent.

What Adrian said etches deeply into him. He wants to know if he is capable of making a home elsewhere.

And the very thought terrifies him.

What is he considering? What is he even thinking of?!

He quickly dismisses the idea before it can transform into a full-fledged plan.

“So,” he mutters. “you have a home like that to go back to?”

He wants to know this. He wants to know what sort of ‘home’ awaits Adrian’s return.

For some reason, Adrian is hesitant to answer. “Something like that,” he says with a heavy sigh after some while. Though it is freezing in the hut, even with the fire burning day and night, Adrian reclines on the pallet without a shirt.

As the night wears on, Jongin reluctantly stamps out one of the candles near their pallets, so that the brightness does not keep Adrian up, even though he doubts anything can keep the man up. He has managed to sleep soundly the previous night through a thunderstorm while every thunderbolt woke Jongin up with a jolt.

And like the previous night, Jongin stays awake for the better part of it. But unlike the night before, it is not due to the storm.

He knows that it is inappropriate to leer at a sleeping man. Pathe would be very disappointed in him for lusting after a man like this. But Jongin simply cannot look away. And he really tried.

He wants to soak in as much of this sight as he can before it all ends. He suddenly and very selfishly wishes for the storm to never end.

* * *

The following day is even colder. And the nightfall comes with a wintry cold that has Jongin shivering in front of the fire, which is doing very little to keep him warm.

The cold does not seem to bother Adrian, however.

“How are you not cold?” inquires Jongin. Adrian perks up, as though Jongin has said something that piques his interest.

“I once survived a brutal winter in the woods with nothing but a blanket,” he says. “I could not even light a fire because of the winds and the falling snow.”

Jongin’s jaw drops. “A brutal… winter?”

Adrian smirks. “Some days, I couldn’t feel my fingers, toes, nose, or even my co–” he trails off, staring at Jongin with an alarming before he clears his throat. “ _colon_.”

Jongin does not know what that is, but he doesn’t ask. He shifts on the ground to face Adrian properly. “How did you survive then?”

“I cut open elks and bears,” says Adrian, grinning. “Gut them. Rip their insides out. Then I slip into their carcasses to stay warm.” Adrian stops as though he suddenly realizes something. “Wait, Jongin, I–”

Jongin can’t tell if the man is joking, but the gory image that flashes before his eyes immediately turns his stomach and he runs to the outhouse to heave his dinner.

When he returns to the outhouse, embarrassed and head still slightly spinning, Adrian looks at him with a guilty, sympathetic look.

“I am sorry,” he says with a pitiful smile. “I was not thinking when I told you that.”

Jongin sits down on the pallet and pulls the blanket around his trembling shoulders.

“It is how life is,” Adrian adds a moment later. “We do what we must to survive.”

Jongin hugs his knees to his chest. “You killed those animals to survive?”

Adrian sighs. “Of course. I wouldn’t kill them for no reason.”

Jongin frowns. “But many of you do. The hunters…”

“Oh.” Adrian rubs the back of his neck. “I suppose some of us do it for entertainment and vanity.”

“Do you do that, too?”

Adrian stays silent.

Jongin hangs his head.

“Hey,” Adrian says at length. “I will never do that after this.”

Jongin looks up at him, blinking. “Really?”

Adrian shifts to the edge of his pallet, and it isn’t until he extends a hand to touch a side of Jongin’s face does Jongin realize just how small the distance between their pallets is.

He stills in place, his heart skipping a beat. The warmth of Adrian’s palm is more comforting that the warmth of the fire. Jongin, without even realizing it, starts leaning into the touch.

“I was ignorant,” says Adrian. “I did not know that there is so much to a forest. To the entire ecosystem. There is so much that I don’t… know. And I did not know that I actually knew so little until… I met you.”

His hand moves up a little, and he lightly traces the sharp shell of Jongin’s ear with a thumb. Jongin’s racing heart threatens to leap out of his chest as Adrian’s soft gaze follow his thumb that is feeling the shape of Jongin’s ear.

“Your ears are so cold,” whispers Adrian, as though he is talking to himself. Jongin’s ears _are_ indeed cold.

“Adrian,” he lets out, his cheeks warmer than they have ever been in the past couple of days.

Adrian withdraws immediately, clearing his throat. Jongin searches for the sudden taciturn look in Adrian’s expression, but he does not find any as Adrian lies down on the pallet, tucking an arm under his head.

He eventually turns his back to Jongin and says, “Sleep well.”

Jongin does not sleep well that night, however. In fact, he does not even fall asleep. There should be nothing about Adrian that makes his heart flutter the way it does. Adrian is the embodiment of everything that Pathe warned Jongin against. Yet, he can’t help but look at the callused man with tenderness.

He isn’t sure why he is breathing fast or why his heart is louder than the thunderstorm at the moment. He purposefully studies the deep contours and dimples on Adrian’s muscled back. He remembers the warmth of Adrian’s lips from the other day and his fingers from when they were grazing Jongin’s ear a moment ago.

He doubts Adrian knows just how maddening all of this is for him. But it is not half as crazy as what he really wants to admit.

Before he even realizes what he is about to do, he is pushing the blanket aside and climbing out of his own pallet to slink into Adrian’s. The heat of Adrian’s body is comforting and alarming.

Adrian stirs and turns around to gawp at Jongin, who is kneeling on a side of his pallet, staring down at him with a pained look.

“Jongin,” rasps Adrian. “What are you doing?”

Jongin wishes he had the answer. But he does not. All that he knows is that he likes how warm Adrian is, both inside and out, even though he is very rough around the edges.

Adrian is waiting for an answer. Jongin does not give it to him.

Propping himself up on his elbows at last, the man pins Jongin with a flustered frown. Jongin tells his heart to be brave, and it must be listening to him because he is lifting his hand to splay it on Adrian’s toned chest. He swallows hard as he feels Adrian’s heart thump against his palm. Adrian does not turn a hair while Jongin studies the steady rhythm of his heart, wanting to etch it to his own heart. Though Adrian’s heartbeat is fast, it is steady and unwavering, unlike Jongin’s that is going haywire in his chest at the moment.

As he slowly walks the hand down Adrian’s chest, Adrian catches his wrist, halting him.

“Jongin,” he says, almost sighing. “We… can’t.”

Jongin meets the man’s eyes and sees his own reflection in them. He tries swallowing the lump in his throat before speaking. “We can’t… what, Adrian?”

His hand is still pressed against Adrian’s chest, and Adrian’s hand is still clamped, almost painfully, around Jongin’s wrist.

“We can’t… do this,” says Adrian through his grit teeth.

“What are we doing?” asks Jongin. He is not playing coy. He sincerely does not understand what exactly is that Adrian thinks they are doing. What was the man doing back at the weeping willow? What was he doing when he was touching Jongin’s ear a moment ago? And what does he think they are doing now?

Jongin shudders lightly when he hears a thunder, and Adrian’s hand around his wrist tightens. His free hand promptly flies up to the back of Jongin’s neck and tugs Jongin forward.

Jongin’s breath hitches, and he thinks his forehead is about to slam against Adrian’s, but Adrian stops, his hand clutching at Jongin’s nape, just as the tip of their noses touch.

Holding his breath, Jongin stares into Adrian’s eyes. All that he needs to do to have Adrian’s lips between his own is tilt his head. But he is unable to move a muscle.

Adrian’s hand moves from Jongin’s neck to a side of his head. His fingers lightly brush against Jongin’s ear while the man’s piercing eyes continue to bore into Jongin’s. His breath that is grazing Jongin’s lips feel hot. This man is still very much a stranger, yet Jongin somehow wants to entrust all that he is and has to this man. Even the parts of him that he has not entrusted the forest with.

“I am cold,” he whispers at length, lowering his gaze. It is not what he wants to say, but it is all that he can manage. He is burning hot enough in embarrassment that he is sure he does not even need any additional warmth.

Adrian retrieves his hands and pushes the blanket aside, as though to make space for Jongin on the small pallet.

Jongin takes a moment to join Adrian down on the pallet. All that he can hear is the sound of his own ragged breathing and pulsing blood in his ears.

“Are you warm now?” asks Adrian, drawing the blanket over Jongin’s body.

Jongin does not respond. He continues to stare at the man, completely short-winded, unable to find his next words. He settles on the pallet and swallows. There is barely any space left between their bodies, and Jongin, as embarrassed and shy and confused as he is, does not want it to be any different.

Adrian lowers back onto the pallet, facing Jongin. They do not say a word for a very long time, and it feels enough. _This_ feels enough. Although all that Jongin wants is _more_.

He has never wanted _more_. He has always been very content and satisfied with what he has and is given. He has never asked for more.

But he feels like doing it now. He wants to open his mouth and ask Adrian for more.

What is _more?_ What does it entail?

He tries touching Adrian’s arm this time. Adrian removes Jongin’s hand and sighs. “No,” he says gently.

Jongin blinks. “No? Why? What am I doing?”

Adrian’s eyes narrow. “Jongin,” he lets out, as though he is fatigued. “Just… go to sleep.”

Jongin does not argue. He is not very good at arguing, anyway. He should feel ashamed and appalled at how he has been behaving lately. A couple of weeks with a man and he already feels… corrupt. That is what Pathe would have said. That Jongin is now corrupt because of this man. But it does not feel like a bad thing. The only thing that makes Jongin feel bad is that he does not feel bad about lying on the same pallet under the same blanket as this man, yearning for his warmth and a lot more.

“Close your eyes,” says Adrian as Jongin continues to stare at him.

Jongin does what the man says and lets his eyes fall shut. It does not help much because now he is hyperaware of Adrian’s breathing along with the heat and scent of his skin. He wants to touch it, wrap himself up in it.

He hears Adrian swallow loudly. He pictures the protrusion in Adrian’s throat bobbing. He hears the man lick his lips. He pictures Adrian’s tongue jutting out of his mouth a little.

Then he feels Adrian’s hand on the small of his back. His eyes flutter open to meet Adrian’s because he is not sure if he is just imagining it.

Along with Adrian’s breathing, Jongin’s shallows, too. Adrian has big hands, very big ones. Bigger than Pathe’s, bigger than the ones the short, stout hunters, who come to the forest with their bows and arrows, have. And they are very callused. Jongin did not know that hands could even get so rough. But right now, his hand is holding Jongin’s waist with a gentleness Jongin did not think was possible to see in the man.

“You are making this very difficult for me,” says Adrian in a low voice that is nearly inaudible.

“What is… _this_?” asks Jongin shakily, trying very hard to keep his hands to himself. He feels the warmth of Adrian’s palm seep through his tunic at the back.

“Why do you play coy?” asks Adrian, frowning.

“I am not playing coy,” replies Jongin. “I have never… had anything… like this.”

Adrian does not look surprised. He lowers his languid gaze to Jongin’s parted lips then. He swallows once more before he closes his eyes and leans in. Jongin shuts his own eyes when Adrian’s lips press against his own.

He does not think either of them is breathing.

So, this is what a kiss feels like. Jongin has wondered about it many times before, of course. Ever since Pathe sat him down when he turned fourteen and talked to him about all the pleasures even the most righteous of faes would desire when they come of age.

He also told Jongin that with faes, it is forever. So, they must make their choice wisely.

Pathe would most certainly not think that Jongin has made a wise choice.

He brings a hand up to Adrian’s chest and feels the man’s quickening heartbeat that he also feels against his own lips. It is more intimate than Jongin has imagined. It feels like a fire is set alight in his chest. It also feels like he is being stampeded on. The kiss itself is soft and tender, but everything else in that moment feels violent, as though he is caught in a murderous vortex.

Yet somehow, simultaneously, his insides feel like blossoming flowers.

The storm in Jongin’s heart is louder than the one assaulting the world around him right now.

Adrian pulls away before Jongin even has a chance to return the kiss. He sits up and buries his head in his hands. Jongin sits up and hesitantly touches Adrian’s back. He draws a breath when he feels Adrian’s shoulder blade shift under his palm.

“Adrian?” he calls in a small whisper. He does want the man to feel bad about it. Jongin certainly does not feel about it. It had felt good. So good. And it still does, as the heat of Adrian’s mouth continues to ghost over Jongin’s lips.

Adrian brings his head up and sighs. “I cannot do this to you,” he says, turning his head a little, though not enough to meet Jongin’s eyes.

“You are not doing anything that I do not want you do,” says Jongin carefully. He lets his fingers slide along the tautening muscles of Adrian’s back.

“I cannot stay,” Adrian says again. And it makes Jongin’s heart sink even deeper.

“I know,” he mutters, resting his cheek on Adrian’s shoulder. He is _oh-so_ warm. “I will not… ask you to.”

Adrian shifted his weight on the pallet then and faced Jongin with a frown. “Because I have to return, Jongin.”

Jongin nods his head slowly, casting his gaze low. “I know.”

He only looks up again when Adrian cups a side of his face and lifts it to meet his eyes. “And you will not follow me, will you?” he asks.

Jongin’s eyebrows furrow into a frown. “I cannot,” he whispers. “I… I will not belong in the world of men.”

Adrian closes his eyes momentarily, sucking in a few deep breaths. When he opens his eyes again, they instantly look to Jongin’s lips.

* * *

He is a man who takes what he desires without a second thought. He has always had that power. He was born with that power. He grew up with that power. No one in this realm has that sort of power but him. Whatever it is that he wants, he acquires it. By hook or by crook. By flattery or threat. By affection or war. No one says no to him, anyway.

But for the first time in his life, Adrian hesitates to take something he desires with a lust like no other. Perhaps it is not all just lust. Perhaps it is more than that.

And that is why he is hesitant.

He is afraid of tainting something so beautiful. Every time he touches the boy, it feels like he is crumpling a delicate flower in his unreasonably rough hands. And even though he wants to stop, he is unable to. It feels like a sin, and Adrian usually does not give half a damn about committing sins.

As he had told the boy, men often commit sins without much remorse.

It does not make it any easier when Jongin is so willing. It surprises Adrian, however. From everything he’s heard from the boy, it does not seem like Jongin would want anything to do with a man like him. But here he is, staring at Adrian with his wide doe eyes, like he is hoping for Adrian to kiss him again.

He could tell that the boy has little to no experience when it comes to kissing. Not that it made the kiss any less pleasurable. Adrian is not sure when was the last time a kiss had had his heart pounding the way it was when he had his lips pressed against Jongin’s.

Fae or whatever mystical creature of the forest Jongin is, Adrian realizes that he is still a youthful boy, who wants to step out of his protective sphere of innocence, nonetheless.

There is confusion in his eyes. Along with curiosity and desire. It is hard to look at those beautiful eyes, framed with curly dark fringes, without feeling a strong urge to lunge at the boy and pin him to the pallet.

Adrian is not exactly known for self-restraint of any kind. So, Jongin batting his eyes like he is waiting for Adrian to kiss him again does not help one bit. And god, kissing him feels so good.

* * *

“We should sleep,” says Adrian, much to Jongin’s dismay. He is not sure what he wants to do, but he certainly does not want to go to sleep.

He has never been stubborn about anything. He has always obeyed Pathe and the forest. He does everything that is expected of him. But suddenly, he does not feel like doing what he is supposed to do.

Does that make him reckless and selfish?

Even though he would rather stay up and wait for the man to brush their lips together again, he reclines on the pallet, facing Adrian.

“You need to close your eyes and try to sleep,” says Adrian with a small smirk playing on his lips. He is so very handsome.

“I do not want to close my eyes,” says Jongin, and Adrian’s smile widens.

“Neither do I,” he replies. “But it would help me a lot if you do.”

Because Jongin does not want to make Adrian uncomfortable and have the man chase him away from the pallet or storm out of the hut, he exhales heavily and lets his eyes fall shut. He is still hoping that Adrian will kiss him once more.

But in a few moments, he hears the soft snores and heavy yet steady breathing of the man. He cracks his eyes open and watches the way Adrian’s chest rises and falls. He licks his smiling lips and snuggles as close as he can without waking the man up.

That night, he manages to fall asleep in the middle of a thunderstorm, cocooned in a warmth he knows he will miss as soon as it disappears.

* * *

They carry on with the day like nothing happened the previous night. Jongin was relieved to see Adrian’s smile when he had roused the earlier this morning and found the man tossing a piece of firewood into the fireplace.

They do not talk about the kiss or anything else that had happened. But it is okay. Adrian helps Jongin prepare their meals, and he grouses about the ingredients, calling them birdfeed and rabbit food.

Jongin does not argue because technically, they are birdfeed and rabbit food.

“Have you grown up eating only things like this?” asks Adrian as they settle before the fire with their respective bowls containing cassava porridge topped with huckleberries, nuts, boiled milk thistles, seeds and honey.

Jongin frowns. “Yes,” he says. “These are what Pathe can make.”

Adrian sighs. “This… Pathe. He was like a father to you?”

Nodding, Jongin swallows a mouthful of the porridge.

“But he wasn’t your actual father,” says Adrian. Jongin stares at him for a moment, dreading what the man is about to ask next. “You… do not have any other family?”

Jongin lowers the bowl to the ground and gnaws at his bottom lip for a moment. Then diffidently, he says, “I do not remember much. One day, Pathe found me lost in the forest. I do not know how I ended up here or where my family was. Pathe said that he found me crying and sitting on a tree, the branches and leaves stroking my hair to comfort me. The only thing I could tell him was my name.”

He hesitantly brings his head up to look at Adrian, expecting the man to laugh. But Adrian is staring at him with an earnest look that makes Jongin’s stomach knot.

“You must have been so scared,” comments Adrian at length.

Jongin shrugs lightly. “Like I said, I do not remember.”

“Have you ever tried to… find your family?”

Jongin shakes his head. “I haven’t,” he admits embarrassedly.

Adrian’s brows furrow. “Why not?”

Jongin takes a moment to answer as he averts his gaze to the fire. Swallowing, he eventually mutters, “Because I am afraid of finding out that they are not looking for me.”

Adrian lifts a hand to the back of Jongin’s neck. The touch is not only consoling, but it also feels like nothing can hurt Jongin in that moment. For as long as he is in the clasp of Adrian’s hands, he is safe and protected. Which is ironic, because all his life, Pathe told him that falling into the hands of men will be their undoing. And perhaps he _is_ right. Perhaps this is a false sense of security that will lead Jongin to his demise.

He shudders lightly and clenches his eyes tightly when Adrian’s fingers stroked his hair by the nape of the neck. Clearing his throat at length, Adrian withdraws his hand and returns his attention to his food.

“Do you believe that your family abandoned you?” asks Adrian after a while.

Jongin does not know what to say to that. Of course, he has considered that option, but he would rather believe that he had wandered too far on his own account one fateful day and lost his way back.

“It does not matter,” he mutters when he can speak again. “I have no grievances.”

Adrian’s frown deepens. “You have no grievances?”

Jongin shakes his head.

“Ever?”

Blinking, Jongin asks, “Do you have them?”

Adrian lets out a heavy breath. “So many, I cannot keep count.”

Jongin does not ask the man what these grievances are. He does not think he has the heart or the ability to comprehend the sort of grievances men hold.

But he does want to know more about Adrian. He wants to know everything about the man, even the bad things. But he does not think he will be able to handle it all when Adrian inevitably leaves.

* * *

Jongin teaches Adrian how to make his favourite muscadine drink later with the rainwater they had collected earlier in the day. Adrian is grinning giddily at the sharp taste of the drink as he takes a sip.

“Reminds me of wine,” he says.

Jongin tilts his head a little from where he is standing. “Wine?”

“Yes. It is the absolute best.”

“Is it a drink?” asks Jongin.

Adrian nods, taking another sip of the drink. “The most superior drink of all,” he drawls. “It makes men weak and women… loose.”

Jongin does not know what the man means by the latter. He has not met any women, but he has heard a great deal about them from Pathe. Faes rarely identify by a gender, said Pathe. Many of them are the best of both worlds. And a lot of them are of a completely different gender that does not exist in the realm of men.

“Loose?” he echoes confusedly.

Adrian laughs, as though he is entertaining a funny memory or thought in the privacy of his own mind. He shakes his head and smirks at Jongin.

Later that night, Adrian voices no objection when Jongin settles on his pallet. He takes a seat on one end of the pallet and glances at Jongin, who is reclined on the thin bedding, watching the man intently.

Adrian flashes a faint smile before his gaze shifts to Jongin’s feet. “Are you not cold?” he asks.

Jongin gasps a little, jerking upright when Adrian takes hold of one of his feet and wraps his fingers around the toes. “ _Adrian_ ,” Jongin whimpers.

Adrian pauses and looks at Jongin worriedly. “Did I hurt you?”

Licking his lips, Jongin stares at the man’s hand that is curling around the sole of his foot. “No,” he says quietly. “It’s just that… I’ve never been… touched over there. It is… shocking.”

And ticklish.

Adrian is wearing a playful expression now. Jongin gasps once more when the man draws a finger along the sole.

“Stop, please,” wheezes Jongin, almost immediately pulling his foot away. Adrian catches his shin and grabs the foot again before Jongin could hide it under the blankets.

“You never wear any shoes,” remarks Adrian, lifting the foot to his lap. Jongin stares at him curiously now. “Yet somehow, you have the… smoothest… palest feet I have ever seen.”

“Have you seen many feet before?” asks Jongin, not trying to sound too cheeky on purpose.

Adrian laughs then. His thumb that is pressing into the sole is making it very difficult for Jongin to think. Adrian sighs and gently strokes the top of Jongin’s foot before he cups his hand around the heel.

Jongin stills into the pallet, his eyes widening as Adrian lifts the foot and brushes his lips against its sole.

“Adrian,” rasps Jongin, blood rushing to his face and filling his cheeks. “What are you…”

Adrian’s beard pricks into the tender skin there, and Jongin clenches his eyes for a moment to calm his heart that feels like it is about to explode.

“Stop it, please,” murmurs Jongin embarrassedly, though he does not do much to retrieve his leg.

Adrian pulls back and slowly lowers Jongin’s foot back to the pallet. He then looks away momentarily with his eyebrows knitted together.

Jongin is unable to find his voice for a while. Up until a moment ago, he did not think that anything could be more intimate than a kiss on the lips. He has just been proven wrong.

“We should sleep,” he says eventually, breathing fast.

Adrian nods his head curtly and lays himself down next to Jongin on the pallet.

Jongin still cannot believe that this is something they are doing. Of course, they blame it mostly on the cold and the storm. It is cosier to sleep close to one another, but they both know that it is nothing but an excuse.

Adrian is a decent sleeper. He does not move much, especially when he has very little space on the pallet. Jongin is an even lighter sleeper. Sometime during the night, Jongin stretches his arm over Adrian’s chest. It does not wake Adrian up, thankfully.

At the crack of dawn, he feels Adrian’s leg slide in between his thighs. It jerks Jongin up at once, and he hastily looks at the man’s sleeping face. Adrian also has an arm lightly draped over Jongin’s waist.

Jongin slowly rests his head back on the pallet and falls back asleep.

* * *

When he rouses in the morning, he finds Adrian perched on the edge of the pallet with his head hung. He smells like fresh water and lye soap. His hair is damp, and his unlaced shirt is clinging to his shoulders.

He seems to be lost in his thoughts, as he is every now and then.

Jongin props himself on one of his elbows before he reaches a hand out and touches the man’s back.

Adrian flinches and turns his head around at once. He blinks at Jongin, who stares at him still half-drowsily.

They stay silent, though Adrian’s breathing is audibly ragged and laboured. Jongin wonders what has the man all riled up so early in the morning while the storm still raged.

“Are you all –” Jongin begins to ask, but he cuts himself short with an unexpected gasp as Adrian lunges at him, his hands flying up to grab the sides of Jongin’s face.

Shoving Jongin down on the pallet again, the man quickly mounts him, one of his hands closing around Jongin’s wrist, pinning it to the pallet near Jongin’s head.

“Careful,” pants Jongin, raising his free hand to the side of Adrian’s abdomen where the wound is rapidly drying into a scar. Adrian clenches his teeth when Jongin slips his hand into the shirt and lightly brushes his fingers against the jagged, rough skin.

He stiffens as Adrian begins to snarl, nearly baring his gritted teeth. “You are _tormenting_ me,” the man hisses. Jongin stares into the two pools of brown that are glaring back at him.

“What?” he lets out.

Their mouths are only a hair’s breadth away from one another. Jongin lifts his hand from Adrian’s waist and splays it on the man’s heaving chest. Has he upset Adrian somehow? Because he certainly looks irritated.

It does not take Jongin too long to figure out that it is not irritation that is flaring in Adrian’s eyes. It is mostly frustration along with a hint of something else that Jongin has a hard time reading.

He thinks his heart stops beating for a while when Adrian loosely wraps a hand around his neck, thumb pressing into his jaw. His fingers slowly curl around the back of Jongin’s neck as he crawls over Jongin and eventually, straddling him.

Adrian’s laboured breathing is louder than the storm, and it is all that Jongin can hear for a length, along with the erratic drumming of his own heart.

“How am I… _tormenting_ you?” asks Jongin, his voice breaking. His hands are somewhere on Adrian’s body. It nearly pains him to look at the man’s eyes, but he is unable to look anywhere else either.

The scowl on Adrian’s brows deepens. He pulls away from Jongin abruptly and sits up again, huffing and puffing like a wild animal.

Just as Jongin lifts a hand to touch the man’s back, Adrian springs up to his feet and storms out of the hut, leaving Jongin to sulk on his own.

* * *

# C H A P T E R F O U R

The hut is twice as cold without Adrian there. Where has he gone, Jongin wonders, seated before the fireplace, staring at the door with his arms wrapped around his legs. Adrian has been gone for hours, and Jongin’s stomach is beginning to churn with concern.

He tries to think of the worst-case scenarios, and he does not like any of the conclusions he arrives at. Just as he rises to his feet to go looking for the man in the middle of the storm, the hut’s door swings open, and Adrian steps in, bathed in rainwater.

Shutting the door behind him, he looks to Jongin. They do not move or say anything for a long moment. Jongin wants to tell Adrian that he has saved the man some pottage, and he will heat it up.

But he does not open his mouth, however. He stares at the water rivulets that are dripping from Adrian, collecting in puddles on the floor around the man. He moves then to get the towel.

Crossing the small room, he holds the cloth out to Adrian. When Adrian does not take it from his hand, Jongin frowns at the man confusedly.

He has done nothing to deserve this treatment, has he? Why does Adrian do this to him time and again? Are all men like this? And to think Adrian had accused Jongin of tormenting _him_ this morning.

“You’re wet from the rain,” says Jongin and instantly feels stupid for it. Of course, Adrian would have noticed that. “Towel,” he whispers, keeping his gaze low.

It takes Adrian a moment to react, and when he finally does, he takes the towel from Jongin’s hand and dries his hair with it.

“You might catch a cold,” he says as Adrian brushes past him.

“I really don’t think I would,” mutters Adrian, and Jongin looks at him confusedly.

What does he mean he does not think he would? Anyone can catch a cold, right? Even faes catch cold.

“Are you hungry?” asks Jongin.

Adrian simply shakes his head as he removes his shirt. This time, Jongin does not look away. His cheeks start to burn, but he does not feel like looking away now. And Adrian pays little attention to who is watching him.

“It does not look like the storm is going away anytime soon,” says Adrian as he changes into a dry tunic, one that Jongin had just recently altered for him. It does not seem like Adrian really wants to have a discussion about the storm. So, Jongin does not reply.

He watches Adrian plump on the pallet, shoulders slumped. Jongin wonders if he should say something about the way Adrian had acted this morning. But he decides not to. He does not know if it would make things worse.

He goes to sit on his own pallet, which he has not done in a couple of days. He silently watches Adrian for a moment, and it only makes him more and more nervous.

He has never been so apprehensive. But everything about Adrian seems to make him nervous. Right from the moment he found the man washed up on the riverbank.

He does not particularly like the feeling.

He wonders if anything about makes Adrian as nervous.

“I’m sorry,” he hears the man say after a very long moment of silence.

“F-For what?” he asks, pulling his knees up to his chest, back leaned against the wall.

“For… this morning,” says Adrian. “For everything.”

Jongin swallows. “You have not done… anything you need to apologize for.” Well, except maybe for running away every time after lighting a fire in Jongin.

“This is not right,” the man says with a sigh.

Jongin does not ask him what he is talking about. He _knows_ what Adrian is talking about this time.

“Okay,” he whispers and keeps his head low.

Adrian shifts on the pallet and glances back at Jongin. He looks guilt stricken. Whatever that he has him feeling this way…

* * *

They lay down on their own pallets tonight. Adrian is not asleep yet, but he has his back turned to Jongin.

He will leave. Jongin reminds himself of that fact repeatedly while he vacantly stares at the man’s back. It will hurt when he leaves. Just like how it had hurt when Pathe left.

Ever since Pathe’s death, Jongin constantly convinces himself that he is not alone. But perhaps he is. Because having Adrian around feels so good. It feels like taking the first breath as he comes up for air.

It will not be fair to ask Adrian to stay, will it? He will be taken away from everything he knows. It will be like Jongin leaving the safety and peacefulness of his forest.

Perhaps Adrian would come visit. But what if he does not?

Jongin sits up on his pallet. The burning sensation in the pit of his stomach and the ache in his chest are making it difficult for him to even try to fall asleep.

He thinks of calling for Adrian, but he does not think it will help either of them.

* * *

The storm leaves a horrid mess behind. Everything smells like rain and damp loam when Jongin comes out of the grotto three days later, squinting at the early morning sun. Adrian quietly follows him. They have not spoken much the last few days. Adrian had busied himself with fixing all the things that needed fixing in Jongin’s hut. Like the little holes in the roof, the slanted shelves and the outhouse door. Jongin tried to keep himself distracted with some sewing. He is stitching up a new shirt for Adrian as a parting gift.

“Wow,” Adrian lets out, frowning at the uprooted trees.

Though Jongin feels like his heart is wailing, he tells himself and Adrian that this is nature. One cannot control it, but the balance is vital.

Adrian pins Jongin with that disbelieving look of his. “I did not think you would get all poetic about the aftermath of a thunderstorm.”

Jongin does not reply to the man’s quip as he makes his way to one of the fallen trees, the wet grass lightly pricking the soles of his feet.

Some of the animals are starting to come out, too. Jongin looks to the taller trees beseechingly, hoping that their canopies would make way for some sunlight.

There are leaves, branches and twigs everywhere.

“Are you not upset?” asks Adrian, placing a comforting hand on the small of Jongin’s back.

Though it shocks him a little, Jongin welcomes the touch, because he _is_ upset. But he doubts that it has much to do with the aftereffects of the storm.

He has a hard time meeting Adrian’s gaze. He had selfishly wished that the storm would last longer, even at the cost of the things that he dearly cares for.

“Like I said,” he mutters, swallowing the lump in his throat. “This is nature.”

He turns around to head for the river. Adrian follows.

They take a bath in the river, though not together. Jongin appreciates it when Adrian turns away when he climbs out of the river and starts getting dressed.

He then patiently waits for Adrian to be done too before they start for the grotto.

It takes Adrian a moment to return to the hut. And when he finally shows up, Jongin turns around to ask the man if he would like to have some more of the honey taffies they had made together the previous night.

He stills, however, eyes darting to the bunch of wildflowers Adrian was gripping in his hand.

“I did not pluck them, don’t worry,” the man says immediately. “I, um, found them on the ground.”

Jongin does not know what to say. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears.

“I do not know how it is for… you,” says Adrian, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “But we give flowers.”

“For what?” asks Jongin, blinking.

Adrian stammers again. “For, uh, a lot of things. It is just a nice gesture.”

Jongin is confused. “Do you want me to make you some jam with those?”

Adrian’s eyes widen. “No, no,” he says, closing the distance between them. “I picked these up… for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes,” the man sighs. “You know what, this is silly.”

As he starts to turn on his heel, Jongin catches his arm. Adrian stops, looking down at Jongin with that earnest gaze of his. Licking his lips, Jongin reaches out and wraps his fingers around Adrian’s that are gripping the thin stems of the wildflowers.

“What do your people do with flowers?” he asks Adrian then.

“I suppose they can make your home pretty,” says Adrian with a small smile. “Or…”

He pulls a stalk of flower, the purple one, from the bunch and lifts it to a side of Jongin’s head.

Jongin flinches a little when Adrian slides the flower behind his ear. His heart skips a beat as Adrian’s fingers tenderly brush along the shell of his pointed ear.

Pulling away, Adrian smiles widely. “You are so beautiful.”

_You are so beautiful…_

The comment takes Jongin aback. He must have looked so shocked that Adrian’s smile is beginning to falter. No one has ever told him that. The winds and the trees compliment him playfully every now and then, but he has never _heard_ someone call him beautiful.

 _Is_ he beautiful?

How beautiful? What kind of beautiful? As beautiful as the first snowdrop? Or perhaps something less than that.

His face turns hot, and he quickly drops his gaze.

“I…” Adrian starts to say, but he promptly trails off.

“You do not have to say such things,” mutters Jongin, turning his back to the man.

Adrian is silent for a moment. Then in a steady voice, he says, “But you are.”

Jongin curls his bottom lip between his teeth and gnaws on it until it is throbbing. He hangs his head, finding a pot to put the flowers in.

“Jongin,” calls Adrian. He sounds like he is out of breath. Jongin does not turn around.

He feels Adrian’s hand on the small of his back then and the man’s warm breath on his nape.

“You are,” Adrian says again in a whisper that has Jongin shuddering lightly. The man is standing so close that Jongin can almost feel Adrian’s heartbeat on his back.

He does not particularly like just how tall and big Adrian is. It makes him feel rather small, and he is in _no way_ a small fae himself.

“I am not sure if anyone has ever told you that,” says Adrian, wrapping a hand around Jongin’s elbow. “But I can tell you that you are very… very beautiful. And I am not just talking about your appearance. You are so beautiful on the inside, too. You feel… like a dream. Surreal. And so… out of reach.”

Jongin feels like he might burst into tears if Adrian said another word. He has not cried many times in his lifetime thus far. He was crying when Pathe first found him and told him that faes should not shed their tears unnecessarily. He nearly cried when Pathe died, but he somehow pulled through his sorrow then.

Staying strong has never been more difficult when he is around Adrian.

“No,” he lets out when he is able to speak again.

Adrian does not respond immediately. His hand around Jongin’s elbow slip down to Jongin’s wrist. “What?” he asks in a breathy whisper.

Keeping his gaze and head low, he mutters, “I do not think… I am out of reach.”

He turns around to face Adrian, holding his breath. He removes the flower from his ear and aimlessly fidgets with the delicate petals for a moment before he raises his head and meets Adrian’s eyes.

“I’m not,” he exhales, shaking his head a little as he lowers it. “I’m not out of… _your_ reach.”

“Jongin,” sighs Adrian, as though he is frustrated. He brings a hand to Jongin’s chin and slowly lifts his head up. “Do you know what you are saying?”

No, he does not. He does not know what any of this will entail. Pathe did not teach him too much on this arena. But that is the thing. All of this feels incredibly intuitive. It is as though he only operates on his instincts when he is around Adrian. And right now, his instincts are commanding him to do something that inherently feels obscene.

He is embarrassed to look at the man’s eyes. He only looks up again when Adrian cups a side of his face and gently brings it up.

“Do you?” he asks, as though he is waiting for affirmation.

Jongin nods his head, anyway.

Much to his disappointment, however, Adrian heaves a heavy sigh and pulls away. Without another word, he walks over to the pallet and sits down. It looks like his breathing is shallowing.

He eventually raises his head and glances in Jongin’s way with a complacent, relaxed expression.

“Will you come here?” he asks.

Jongin pulls away from the shelves and timidly approaches the man. Adrian lifts a hand, as though to beckon to Jongin when the latter reaches the pallet.

Swallowing hard, Jongin slowly lowers himself onto his knees on the ground, between Adrian’s legs.

Adrian very gently clasps his hands to the sides of Jongin’s face and draws him close. Jongin closes his eyes, almost instinctively, as Adrian leans in.

Their lips touch in the briefest and softest kiss. It is still enough to make Jongin quickly lose himself into the kiss and into Adrian’s touch.

Adrian pulls back and blinks at Jongin, looking into Jongin’s eyes, as if he is searching for a sign of disapproval. He must have not found any because he is leaning in again.

His beard, which he has recently trimmed, grazes Jongin’s cheeks and chin. It makes Jongin shudder as he brings his hands to the pallet between Adrian’s thighs, leaning forward to kiss the man back.

He does not think he is very good at it. Kissing that is.

Adrian is very good at it, however. His lips do not quiver. They move and slip between Jongin’s with a certain grace and expertise that makes Jongin feel like a complete novice in comparison.

Well, he _is_ a novice. He has never been kissed before. Pathe told him that a kiss can mean so many things. But most of all, it is a form of expression, a language on its own to profess all sorts of love. It could be a kiss on the cheek from a loving mother. It could be the start of something new. It could be the reaffirmation of affection. It could be one of the most intimate expressions of love.

Jongin had only imagined what it might feel like before. But now he understands the might of a kiss. Even the gentlest of it.

And it is not enough.

His lower belly feels like it is set ablaze. There are parts of his body tingling with an odd sensation. His head is muddled and buzzing. His ears are burning, and it does not help when Adrian brushes them with his thumbs. His lips, caught between Adrian’s, are wet, slicked with saliva–he isn’t sure whose, though.

His heart starts pounding harder against his ribs when one of Adrian’s hands drop to loosely curl around his neck. Jongin had no idea that he is so sensitive there. Especially where Adrian’s forefinger is pressed into. He shivers lightly, raising a hand to the man’s shoulder, straightening up.

With faes, it is forever. Pathe’s words continue to echo in the back of his mind. This does feel forever. Every one of Adrian’s touches feels forever. Like it is etched to Jongin’s skin and soul. He does not know if he would ever be able to forget it.

He fists Adrian’s shirt by the shoulders when the man brings his hands down to rest them on the sides of Jongin’s waist. Once again, Jongin is reminded of how big the man’s hands are. And oh-so strong.

Which is why he is unable to do anything but topple forward as Adrian draws him onto the pallet without disconnecting their mouths.

Jongin concentrates on the kiss again after climbing onto the pallet, kneeling on either side of Adrian, almost straddling the man. He takes Adrian’s face in his own hands and tries to keep up with Adrian’s kisses. He frequently loses his focus, however, to where Adrian’s hands are, to where _his_ hands are, to Adrian’s beard that is scraping against Jongin’s face, leaving patches of red behind on the skin.

When Adrian breaks the kiss and flinches back a little, Jongin is sitting on his lap with his eyes barely open.

“Jongin,” Adrian lets out in a breathless whisper. Jongin lunges at him again, crushing the man’s lips under his. Adrian groans into the kiss, shocked by the sudden attack.

Hooking an arm around Jongin’s waist, Adrian then plops Jongin down onto the pallet and mounts him, all while keeping their lips locked.

Jongin thinks he might panic – it feels like he is being pounced on by a feral beast. Not that he has ever been attacked by one, but he has witnessed animals hunting for their preys plenty of times. And he most certainly feels like a prey right now. Nowhere to escape. Trapped. Dreading the imminent suffering he is about to face.

The strangest thing is that… he does not want to escape. He involuntarily relents, yields at the clutch of Adrian’s hands and the weight of his body.

Jongin does not realize that he has not taken a breath in a while until he is gasping against Adrian’s mouth. He catches his breath when Adrian breaks the kiss and moves his lips to a corner of Jongin’s jaw.

With his eyes shut, Jongin tilts his head into the pallet, arching his neck to bare it to Adrian’s mouth.

A weak whimper escapes his throat as Adrian’s beard pricks all the spots that Jongin did not even know are sensitive. He splays his hands on Adrian’s back and clutches at the shirt there when Adrian latches his lips on a side of Jongin’s neck.

“Oh,” exhales Jongin, eyes flying open as Adrian starts sucking the flesh there. “A… Adrian…”

He does not know if it feels good or painfully sensitive. Perhaps something in between. He gasps and fists a hand around Adrian’s hair when he feels the man’s teeth graze his skin, his toes curling into the pallet.

He wants to ask what exactly Adrian is doing. But he cannot find his voice. He decides in the end that it feels good. So do the kisses Adrian is leaving all over his neck.

When Jongin is able to concentrate on other things again, he realizes that one of Adrian’s hands is gripping his thigh while the other is tugging at the laces of Jongin’s tunic.

Jongin bites back on a moan. Adrian lifts his head once to capture Jongin’s lips in a kiss before he bows his head again to kiss and suck the skin of Jongin’s collarbones.

“Is this… okay?” asks Adrian, panting a little as he grabs Jongin’s wrist and pins it to the pallet near Jongin’s head. His hand promptly moves up to lace their fingers together.

Jongin does not respond. He is too scared to speak.

“Jongin,” calls Adrian, looking up at him with a frown. “Are you all right?”

Jongin stares into the man’s eyes for a moment, his chest heaving laboriously. He slowly walks his free hand down Adrian’s abdomen and breathlessly whispers, “Don’t… stop. Please.”

Adrian blinks and bites his lower lip. He briefly glances to Jongin’s ear and smirks very faintly before he tilts his head to kiss Jongin full on the mouth again.

It is not anything like he had expected. Perhaps he simply had no idea what to expect. This is all very heady and confusing and overwhelming that all that Jongin can do for most of the part is lay there and try to remember to breathe.

It does not seem like Adrian is troubled by it, though. He is kissing Jongin all over his face and neck. His hands are eagerly and expertly exploring Jongin’s body. He takes his time to slowly savour Jongin.

He moans Jongin’s name a few times as he kisses the crook of Jongin’s neck.

Jongin bites the inside of his cheek when he feels Adrian’s warm hand slip into his tunic. His fingers are rough against Jongin’s belly.

Gasping for air, Jongin grips Adrian’s shoulders.

“Fuck, you’re so soft,” Adrian grunts against Jongin’s cheek. One of his knees is pressing into Jongin’s crotch, and it is making it very hard for him to think about anything else.

Is he soft? He supposes compared to Adrian, whose skin looks and feels like an incredibly muscled animal’s pelt, he is _soft_ , in spite of having grown up in the woods. Pathe used to take care of most of the tough work. Even when Jongin would offer his help, the older fae would simply refuse.

The comment makes Jongin blush. Is it a compliment or a criticism? From the way Adrian is pawing at his belly under the tunic, Jongin safely assumes that it is the former.

Adrian straightens up at some point to get rid of his own shirt. He pauses, kneeling between Jongin’s legs, to muster the sight before him with a deep sigh.

He reaches forward and lightly brushes one of Jongin’s cheeks with the back of his fingers. Jongin does not pay much heed to it because all of his attention is now on Adrian’s toned body.

He wonders what the man does back home to look like so. He had gawked at Adrian the day before as the man bore an entire ledge on his own, barely breaking a sweat.

Everything about the man is impressive. Everything about Adrian makes Jongin question Pathe’s lessons about men and the human world. How can someone so handsome hail from somewhere so terrifying?

Adrian shifts a little on the pallet so that he is now comfortably positioned between Jongin’s thighs. He closes his hands around Jongin’s wrists and lower his body down to Jongin’s.

“It will be too late to turn back if we do this,” he whispers, his lips hovering above Jongin’s.

Jongin lifts his head, chasing after Adrian’s lips. He frowns disappointedly when the man pulls back. He swallows then and closes his eyes momentarily.

“I want this,” he breathes out, though he is not very sure what ‘this’ is. This might be holding Adrian, and having Adrian hold him. This might be crossing that threshold Jongin never thought he ever could.

Adrian licks his lips and releases one of Jongin’s wrists to cup a side of Jongin’s face. “I want this, too.”

Bowing his head, he tenderly kisses Jongin’s lips again. He eventually kneels up once more and hooks his fingers around the hem of Jongin’s tunic.

Jongin lets the man take the reins, for the reason that he has absolutely no idea what to do. He hates himself for it. He hopes that he is not doing the wrong thing, or at least he is not embarrassing himself by being so clueless.

“Stop me if at any point you do not feel good,” says Adrian. “I will go slow.”

Jongin nods shakily. “I will be… fine.”

Of course, he does not know that he would. But he does not want Adrian to stop.

He blushes feverishly when Adrian yanks the tunic over his head and tosses it to Jongin’s pallet. He then stops to painstakingly observe Jongin’s exposed body.

“Stop… looking,” Jongin mewls embarrassedly and bites his lip.

Adrian smiles. “But why?” He presses a hand to Jongin’s chest before slowly drawing his fingers down the sternum and belly. The touch nearly drives Jongin’s mad. “You are beautiful.”

Jongin wants Adrian to stop saying that, too. He brings a hand to his mouth and muffles a moan on the back of it as Adrian bends down to plant a kiss on his belly.

He thinks he is shivering and making embarrassing noises as Adrian kisses his way up. He cannot help it.

He is ready. And even if he is not, he would not refuse Adrian. He can’t afford to. It is too late for that. He is already too far gone.


	4. Chapter 4

# C H A P T E R F I V E

“All right?” asks Adrian as he pushes Jongin’s tunic all the way up to his chest. All that Jongin can do to respond is give a shaky nod of his head. He clenches his eyes tightly with his lower lip curled between his teeth as Adrian bows his head again to leave a trail of kisses on the flat planes of his belly.

He exhales shakily as Adrian crawls back up, planting his splayed hands firmly into the pallet on either side of Jongin’s head. Raising his own hand to the deep sternum of Adrian’s chest, Jongin wonders if the man knows just how exceptionally handsome he is. Not that Jongin has met many men before in his life, but there is something so indisputably attractive about Adrian.

There is no denying that he does not know what any of this entails. But somehow, his body knows. It is promptly readying itself for whatever that is about to happen, and it desires it. His breathing is quick and laboured. Every inch of his skin is burning, though in a good way. It feels as though his insides are loosening up and clenching down simultaneously.

He wants to go through with this. He does not want to spend another night yearning for Adrian in silence.

He lets out an embarrassing moan when Adrian captures his lips for another kiss. Slower this time. Gentler. The man is breathing like a mountain lion, huffing and rasping. He shudders a little when Jongin slides his hand, not very consciously, down to the waistband of the man’s trousers.

Jongin hears Adrian hiss out a curse against his lips.

Withdrawing his hand, Jongin blinks at the man hovering on top of him. “Did I do something to offend you?” he asks innocently, breathlessly.

Adrian smiles softly. “No,” he says, sounding nearly just as breathless. He takes Jongin’s hand and guides it back to where it had been. “I want you to touch me.”

Jongin stares into those intense eyes for a moment, his heart skipping a beat. He wants to tell Adrian that he wants the man to touch him, too. But he doesn’t.

He walks his hand down Adrian’s abdomen again, delighting in the way the firm, taut muscles feel beneath his fingers. Adrian brings his lips to Jongin’s neck in the meantime and peppers it with kisses that make Jongin forget himself.

He has never been touched. Not like this. Not even remotely close to something like this. It is an odd feeling to feel another warm flesh pressed against his.

Jongin is careful as he draws his fingers along Adrian’s scar near the waistline. He clenches his eyes when Adrian places one of his hands on a side of Jongin’s torso while his mouth remains on Jongin’s neck. They spend a while feeling each other’s bodies, or at least as far as their hands could reach without having to move from the position they are in.

“How far,” breathes Adrian against the skin beneath Jongin’s earlobe. “do you want me to go?”

What does that mean? Jongin hesitates for a moment. He does not understand the question, let alone know the right answer to it. He whimpers softly when Adrian’s hand grips a side of his waist, his fingers digging into Jongin’s hip.

He wants to tell the man to not to go anywhere at all, but he doubts that is what Adrian is asking about. Placing his hands on Adrian’s thick shoulder blades, he looks into those dark eyes as the man brings his head up.

“I want… whatever that you… want,” he ends up saying, realizing that it is all that he can say. It makes a corner of Adrian’s lips turn upwards in a pleased smirk that reflects complacency.

“Are you certain?” asks Adrian.

Jongin nods his head, drawing a hand along the man’s shoulder and haired chest. “I am.”

Adrian pulls away from him then and kneels up between Jongin’s legs. He hastily undoes the laces of his trousers. Jongin thinks of not looking–he has had quite a bit of practice of not looking even when it is incredibly tempting to do so. But he does not look away this time.

He wants to look. To see. He wants to remember and byheart everything about Adrian, for as long as he can do that.

To say that Adrian is a mesmerizing beauty would be an understatement. The man could be placed in a sizeable crowd and still be able to stand out like a striking, scintillating star. Jongin wonders if he is anywhere near half as personable as Adrian. And goodness, he is so wonderfully well-proportioned.

Jongin cannot help his leering gaze that is following the trail of dark hairs from Adrian’s navel all the way down to the base of his thick, long, hard and strongly veined shaft. Jongin finds it difficult to swallow his own saliva as his mouth rapidly turns dry.

He keenly watches Adrian wrap one hand around his pulsating length to stroke it slowly once or twice, his eyes fixated on Jongin’s mouth, while splaying the other on Jongin’s belly. His palm is warm, though blistered and scratchy.

Jongin feels obscene beyond reason to even keep his eyes open, let alone observe the vulgarity before him. Yet, he does not want to look away, even for a second.

He props himself up on his elbows and blinks coyly. He swallows hard as Adrian reaches forward and takes hold of one of his hands with his own.

“A… Adrian,” lets out Jongin, his throat closing around a lump.

“Touch me,” says Adrian in a breath. It sounds more like a plea than a command. Jongin does not refuse. He does not want to.

He sits up and stares at Adrian’s hand that is gripped around his wrist, guiding his hand toward the swollen length.

As he slowly envelopes his fingers around it, he draws a deep breath. It is warm and velvety, its protruding veins throbbing against Jongin’s palm. His heart is drumming viciously in his ears.

Adrian closes his own hand around Jongin’s and drives it back and forth along the length. Jongin lets his hand follow the directions given.

He looks up as Adrian tosses his head back, eyes clenched, lips parted, breathing laboured. He eventually withdraws his hand to run it through his hair, letting Jongin take the reins.

Jongin thinks he is doing rather a poor job, but Adrian appears to be very pleased by it. Whatever it is that it is doing to him, it has to be good. His cheeks are full of colour, a groan is clinging to the seam of his lips, his hands are clutching at everything and anything they can reach.

Adrian catches Jongin’s wrist once again and gently coaxes him to recline. Jongin does not object when the man hooks his fingers around the waistband of Jongin’s trousers.

“May I?” asks Adrian, but he does not wait for an answer as he rids Jongin of his trousers.

Completely bared now, Jongin grasps at the blankets to cover his body.

“No,” says Adrian, frowning, as he takes hold of Jongin’s hands. “Do not be embarrassed. I want to… look at you.”

How can anyone admit such things out loud? Jongin has the same shocking desires, but he would never have the courage to vocally express them.

His face flushes, burning. He gathers the blankets around him, nonetheless.

“Jongin,” drawls Adrian with a heavy sigh. Shoving the blankets away, he leans forward and cups Jongin’s cheek before kissing him tenderly on the lips. “I have never… touched anything as beautiful as you.”

His words are like feathers against Jongin’s lips.

“I have conquered so much,” whispers Adrian, moving his mouth to a corner of Jongin’s jaw. “But nothing compares to you.”

Men lie, Pathe said. They lie compulsively. They lie to get what they want. They lie to survive. They lie without an ounce of remorse. Jongin does not think Adrian is lying, but he doubts that he is all that beautiful. It still makes his heart flutter, regardless.

It is soon dark in the hut as the candles die out. Jongin is grateful for the darkness. He has no reason to be as conscious anymore.

And as Adrian begins to kiss him again, the heat of the moment makes the both forget their surroundings and everything other than their own yearning for one another.

“You have never done this before?” asks Adrian, breaking the kiss.

Jongin is confused. “Done what?”

He can feel Adrian smiling upon his lips. “This,” he says. “What we are doing right now.”

Jongin blushes in the dark. “Of course not.”

Is that not obvious by now?

“It might hurt,” says Adrian. Jongin does not know why it would hurt. Or how. He does not ask. “So, stop me at any point you want.”

“I won’t,” Jongin replies quickly and confidently. And he doesn’t.

Adrian uses spit at first, coating one of his fingers generously with it before he slides it between Jongin’s thighs. It shocks the fae, in ways he is not able to describe. Not in words, not in thoughts.

He tries to stay silent, and as Adrian tells him to hold onto him, he does, arms wrapped tightly around the man’s strong body, face buried in the crook of Adrian’s neck.

“Wait,” Jongin eventually huffs, reaching between his legs to grab Adrian’s wrist. Adrian pauses for a moment before he presses a soft kiss to Jongin’s shoulder.

“All right?” he asks in a whisper, carding his fingers through Jongin’s hair. “Does it hurt?”

It does not hurt necessarily. But it is slightly discomforting and strange. It is Jongin’s inexperience that is making it difficult, he presumes.

“No,” he manages to say. He just does not know what is happening. But his body apparently does, because it writhes and arches every time Adrian’s finger would curl inside him. “It’s just…”

“It’ll get better,” says Adrian, and it is a promise that Jongin easily believes.

The man momentarily withdraws and rises from the pallet to rummage through the jars and pots on the shelves. Jongin watches him confusedly.

Retrieving a canister, he holds it up. “Is this oil?”

Jongin nods his head. “It is just wild lavender oil.” With very little uses.

Adrian returns to the pallet and kneels between Jongin’s legs again. Uncorking the canister, he hastily dribbles a generous amount of the oil onto his hand.

“Try to relax,” he mutters as he leans forward and kisses Jongin on the mouth once more. His finger slides back into Jongin with more ease this time.

The kiss is a welcome distraction. Adrian catches Jongin’s hand that is tugging at the blanket and pins it to the pallet. Men are not known for their modesty.

When Adrian pulls his finger out, he grabs Jongin’s thighs and wraps them around his waist. “Hold onto me,” he says. Jongin does what he is told like his life depends on it.

Jongin wishes that it were still storming outside, so that the cacophony of the storm could muffle the embarrassing noises he is making.

* * *

He was not lying when he said the boy is the most beautiful thing he has ever touched. In all the years he has been alive, Adrian has yet to come across something so enchanting. Jongin is beyond human. He is magical. He is something that should be out of the reach of men. Yet, here he is, caught in Adrian’s hands that are intending on tainting and deflowering every inch of him to the point of no return.

No man, even the ones who only swing the other way, would have refused Jongin. All men are flawed. All men are greedy. All men are easily tempted.

Of all Adrian’s conquests thus far, Jongin is undoubtedly unequalled. The boy is pure innocence, radiating the very life of the forest.

It is not all about just conquering him, though. Adrian fears that this is not only lust. He knows what lust is. He knows it all too well. What he feels for the boy is more than that.

He should not have let it get so far. But there is no turning back for either of them now.

* * *

The pain is part of it all. Jongin tries to embrace it, as there is nothing else that he can possibly do. He had asked for it, hadn’t he? He wants it. All of it.

Nothing in Pathe’s teachings had prepared him for this. Even a single touch in that moment brings him to the very edge of his sanity. He is certain that he is doing many things that would seem terribly mortifying in the light of day. He can barely hear his own voice that is rasping in his throat. His hands are grasping at whatever they can hold onto–mostly Adrian.

He thinks he hears the man hiss against his lips when he digs his fingernails into Adrian’s back. The oil helps, but not much. If he had known it would burn like so, he might have pointed Adrian toward the juniper salve.

Adrian eventually lets Jongin have his blankets. He draws one of them over them both and relaxes on top of Jongin, his length buried deep inside Jongin, stretching him open.

Jongin reminds himself to breathe. He is briefly distracted by the sweet nothings Adrian is whispering into his ear, his fingers gently stroking Jongin’s hair.

“So warm,” Jongin catches Adrian breathing. “You’re… so warm, Jongin.”

That alone is enough for Jongin to relax, too. He unclenches his hands and rests them on Adrian’s shoulder blades, running a foot along Adrian’s calf.

He realizes that Adrian is concentrating on Jongin instead of himself. On what Jongin feels like.

He slowly shifts his attention to Adrian then. It is not all that hard to do so. Adrian is easily overpowering, outshining everything that stands in the same room as him.

Hard, pulsating, full. His heart is beating much faster than Jongin’s. His taut skin is damp with sweat and so is his hair. Jongin absentmindedly cards his fingers through it, and Adrian lifts his head to languidly look into Jongin’s eyes.

Adrian lightly brushes their noses together as Jongin draws his fingers along his bearded jaw. “Can I… move?” he asks, as though he is pained.

Swallowing hard, Jongin nods his head against Adrian’s.

It takes a few strokes for Jongin to get somewhat used to it. He keeps his eyes clenched as Adrian slips one hand under his head to cradle it while the other grips a side of his waist. A bead of sweat drips from the man’s forehead before he kisses Jongin, shoving his tongue deep into Jongin’s mouth, licking the ridge of it.

It does get better. Oh, it gets more than just _better._

All that Jongin can feel is Adrian. With every thrust, with every breath. It is all that Jongin is able to feel, hear, see, and touch. Not only physically, but even in the most spiritual of levels.

This is what choosing _the one_ must feel like.

It feels like a flower that blooms at dayspring. And it feels like pearls stripped of its string. It is the bringing of two souls together. It is the forfeiting of their chastity. Does Adrian feel the same? Does it feel like all of his breaths are being torn away from him and given to the other?

Jongin does not realize that he has stopped moving altogether until Adrian stops to point it out. “Are you all right?” he asks, his forehead covered in sweat, his eyes boring into Jongin’s past the wet strands of his hair that are curtaining them.

Jongin barely nods his head and hides his face in Adrian’s shoulder. “Please… don’t stop.”

There is loss. Jongin feels it. His skin crawls with the guilt of losing his innocence and virtue very willingly to a man. Then there is the feeling of achievement, as though he has gained something precious that will leave him a changed fae. It is irreversible, yet it is something Jongin would gladly embosom.

The forest is chiming, singing into the night. It is singing for him. For them. He has lost the last of his purity, forfeited it to this man, heart and soul. It no longer belongs to the forest or the winds, but to this one man, without whom he would feel as empty as the forest without the sun.

He gasps and arches into Adrian when they finally reach their highest. Adrian’s hands are gripping Jongin’s, pressing them so brutally into the pallet that Jongin can feel the hard surface of the hut’s floor against the backs of his hands.

As Adrian collapses on top of him, huffing and puffing, Jongin tries to catch his breath while his head spins. He has never experienced anything quite like it, even though his body seems to know exactly what has happened.

They do not remove or untangle their limbs under the blanket for a long time. Jongin feels sticky and warm. It is not too uncomfortable, fortunately. His lower body has never felt so worn out. There is some pain somewhere, but he tries not to dwell on it for the time being.

Adrian pulls out after a while and presses a kiss to Jongin’s forehead before he passionately kisses Jongin on the mouth. Jongin barely kisses the man back, his body aching with overwhelming fatigue all of a sudden.

Neither of them say a word as they snuggle next to each other, arms loosely dangled over one another. Jongin closes his eyes as Adrian gently tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear. His callused fingers have never touched Jongin so gently. Jongin thinks he is smiling. Through the pain and the giddy pleasure, he is completely worn out.

Sleep comes easy for him that night. He feels safe in Adrian’s arms. And though his body has been tainted, he has never felt more complete.

* * *

Adrian has bedded a substantial number of people, both men and women, over the years, since he turned fourteen. None had left him with this sickening amount of guilt that has his stomach twisting and turning as he quietly watches Jongin’s sleeping face in the dark.

Does this guilt come from taking the boy’s virtue? He has taken his fair share of virgins to his bed in the past. He has never felt so errant about doing so. But now, as he lays there on the pallet, wasted and fatigued, he can’t seem to expel the reprensible feeling that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He feels culpable, as though he has committed a grave and unforgivable crime. Perhaps he has. Tainting someone or something as pure and almost _angelic_ as Jongin feels like a sacrilege, even though Adrian is not necessarily a very pious man.

It had felt good, nonetheless. The entire experience. It had felt more than good. It had felt like Adrian had died and gone to heaven, if there is even one. Every touch had felt like the strike of a lightning. Livening, galvanizing. Yet at the same time, it was soft, gentle.

Jongin is the embodiment of profound ataraxy and innocence. Of course, Adrian has taken someone’s innocence away, more than once. No one ever refuses him. But every one of those people had wronged one way or another. No one is a saint. But Jongin…

Jongin is an entirely different story. Adrian doubts that the boy, as magical and beautiful as he is, has ever gone astray from his righteous path. Until now. Until Adrian had laid his hands on the boy.

He supposes that all this guilt comes from that. From knowing that he has touched and corrupted someone as pure as the driven snow.

He sits up and draws a deep breath, running a hand through his hair. He glances back at Jongin, who is clutching the blanket to his chest, even in his sleep.

His skin is as smooth as velvet, his lips as soft as the petals of an orange blossom. His skin smells like the forest. His hair silkier than cream.

It is never easy or convenient to take virgins. But Jongin had made it so easy by relenting without much protest and yielding so willingly. Adrian had tried to be as gentle as he could. He hopes he hasn’t hurt the boy too much.

He brings a hand to a side of Jongin’s face and strokes the soft cheek with the back of his fingers. He pauses when the boy stirs a little, hand reaching out to grab Adrian’s arm.

Adrian gives it to him and lies back down.

Weary and spent, he brushes a kiss to the sleeping boy’s forehead and holds him close before he too drifts off.

* * *

Jongin rouses with an almost numb ache in his body and an alarming panic in his chest. The air in the hut is still heavy with the remnants and reminders of what they had done the previous night.

It is nearly daybreak. He turns on the pallet in a panic, even though he can still feel the heat of Adrian’s body on his back. The man is there, fast asleep with one of his arms draped over his forehead.

Jongin finds himself smiling like a mad fae. He sits up and winces when he acknowledges the thrumming ache in his lower body. He reaches out and lightly touches Adrian’s chest, careful not to wake him up.

Then quietly slinking out of the pallet, he wraps his naked body up in a blanket and makes his way to the outhouse.

Later, when the sun is up, he heads out of the grotto to pick some wild berries for some tea for breakfast. Adrian likes it with a lot of honey.

It does not take him long to realize that the trees and the wind are uncharacteristically quiet today. He stops and glances around with a frown.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

He receives no answer. He walks over to a tree and places a hand on its bark.

“Have I… offended you?” he inquires. The tree is cold to the touch. Jongin frowns. “It does not change anything.”

The wind ruffles his hair then. Yes, it does. It changes everything. It changes Jongin. It will take him away from the forest, from everything he knows and loves.

Jongin’s frown deepens. “That isn’t true,” he says, very unconvincingly. A moment later, he mutters, “Everyone changes.”

Even though he fears most changes, he understands that change is a part of life. When Pathe passed, that was change, wasn’t it? When he found a wounded man washed up on the riverbank and brought him home to nurse him back to health, that was change. When he lost his family as a child, that was change. When the storm came, the forest changed.

What has happened to him now has and will change him. But that does not mean it will take him away from his home.

The wind, the trees, the river, the birds, the foxes, the critters, the loam, every nook and cranny of the forest seem to give Jongin the silent treatment today. It almost feels as though they are in mourning.

Crestfallen, Jongin wends his way to the weeping willow to collect some of its sap for his medicine stock. Its leaves are still today, and they do not playfully tousle Jongin’s hair when he approaches the tree.

Is the forest upset? Disappointed perhaps? Does it resent him for what he has done?

His heart feels heavy all of a sudden. He returns to the hut instead, seeking the comfort of Adrian’s arms, in which he had spent most of the night.

Adrian is awake. Jongin has a hard time meeting his gaze, and so does the man.

“You all right?” asks Adrian as Jongin places the basket of berries on the shelf.

Jongin gives a small nod of his head. He does not know what Adrian is referring to exactly, though. His body is still aching, but it is manageable. He is confused about the forest’s silence. He is embarrassed to face the man he had been moaning under for the better part of last night. He has not yet come to terms about the changes he will be undergoing henceforth.

But he says, “I am all right.”

He hopes that it is the answer Adrian is looking for.

The man sits up and scratches his beard before glancing at Jongin again. “Will you come here for a moment?” he says.

Jongin falls beside Adrian on the small pallet, keeping his head low.

Taking a gentle hold of Jongin’s chin, Adrian lifts his head up. “Are you hurting?” he asks in a low voice. “Have I hurt you?”

“Oh, dear,” lets out Jongin. “No.” He lowers his gaze once more, letting his chin sit in Adrian’s fingers. “You have not… hurt me.”

“Then why do you look so sullen?” he asks. Jongin does not need to look up to know that the man is frowning with worry.

Swallowing, Jongin looks to Adrian’s other hand that is slowly closing around one of his wrists. Jongin relishes in the touch and the warmth of Adrian’s weathered hand.

“I’m sorry,” mutters Jongin. “I do not mean to look like so.”

Adrian’s fingers slide up to cup Jongin’s cheek then. “If it is… regret, then I am–”

“No,” Jongin rasps immediately. He is upset and quite frankly puzzled about what the forest and the wind told him earlier. But he does not regret anything they had done last night.

A small smile curls Adrian’s lips. “That is a relief.”

Jongin’s heart flutters at that. It must mean the man does not regret anything either. He leans in while Adrian’s fingers curl around the back of his neck. Their lips soon touch in a kiss that takes Jongin’s breath away.

He has never felt so close to anyone. Pathe was like a father to him and the only family Jongin had known for the longest time. But the intimacy that Jongin now shares with Adrian is not something he has even dreamed of. Adrian feels like the forest. Like home.

Quickly, Jongin gains some confidence. He trusts Adrian to stay now. He forgoes some of his fear and lets himself be happy in the man’s warm embrace.

* * *

“Am I right to assume that you… are magical?” asks Adrian, running a thumb along the shell of Jongin’s pointed ear later that evening as they lay on the pallets they had pushed together earlier.

Jongin feels sleep tugging at his eyelids. He smiles almost giddily. Neither he nor his body had been able to refuse when Adrian’s arms clutched around his waist a while ago. The second time had caused less discomfort as Jongin knows exactly what to expect now.

His skin smells like Adrian, and so does everything else in the hut.

“Magical?” Jongin says, letting out a breathy laugh. “I am not _magical._ ”

Adrian looks amused then. “Well, you certainly seem like it.”

Jongin blushes, realizing that it is meant as a compliment. He lifts a hand to Adrian’s haired chest that has finally stopped heaving. “I think… _you_ are magical,” he says.

Adrian’s smile widens. “Do you now?”

Jongin edges closer to share the man’s space. “I have never met anyone like you,” he admits.

“Have you met many men?”

Jongin’s cheeks burn. “No,” he says, though he knows that Adrian is only teasing him. “Would I meet… other men like you?”

Adrian smirks. “I doubt it,” he says. Jongin has always admired the man for his confidence and the way he manages to manifest it without it coming off as arrogance. Or perhaps Jongin simply does not know the difference between the two.

He whimpers as Adrian pulls him forward by the waist. His grip on a side of Jongin’s waist is strong. Jongin lets out a shaky breath as their chests press against one another. He raises a hand to Adrian’s shoulder before slowly running it down the man’s toned arm while Adrian’s own hand snakes down Jongin’s hip.

“There is no one quite like me,” says Adrian. He is still teasing Jongin. “Or so I’m told.”

“By whom?”

“By everyone I take to bed.”

Jongin pauses, blinks and pulls back a little. “By everyone you take to bed?” he asks confusedly.

The playfulness quickly slips from Adrian’s expression. “Uh, yes. But there aren’t many,” he says rather unconvincingly. “I mean, not by my standards. But probably by yours. It does not matter.”

Jongin stares at him. “It does not?” he asks.

Adrian bites his lip. “I mean, it does. Some do. Most of them do not.”

Jongin sits up and looks at Adrian with a confused frown. “I do not understand.”

Adrian heaves a sigh. “Forget that I said that,” he says. “Jongin, men like me… at our age would have seen plenty.”

Jongin knows that. Of course, he knows that Adrian has had more experience than he has. That much is as clear as daylight. But what does _plenty_ entail?

Jongin does not ask. He does not wish to put the man off, even though his own heart is aching in his chest.

“So,” he lets out. “Does… this… matter?”

“Yes,” says Adrian, sitting up to wrap his arm around Jongin’s back. “More than I can ever… seem to comprehend.” He looks earnest then, his eyes searching for Jongin’s. “I would not take advantage of you. And believe me, I tried to… refrain.”

Jongin believes him. He believes everything Adrian says. Is that naivety or blind faith? Pathe might have told him it is both.

But Jongin truly believes that he can trust Adrian.

The universe, as powerful and mighty as it is, would not have sent Adrian in his way if it isn’t all for something bigger.

“What’s the matter?” asks Adrian, noticing Jongin’s pale complexion. “Jongin, I promise–”

“No, no,” Jongin cuts him off. “It’s just that I… I feel different.”

Adrian’s brows furrow. “How so?”

Jongin shrugs a little. “I do not know. But I somehow feel changed.”

“Is that a bad thing?” asks Adrian.

Jongin does not think so, but he also has no way of knowing for certain. The forest had sounded ominous this morning. But perhaps the change is not a bad thing. Perhaps it is what Jongin needs, as terrifying as change may seem.

He wants to ask if Adrian feels any different. There is so much he wants to ask the man. But he relents and falls into Adrian’s arms instead. For now, they are solacing enough.

* * *

They head over to the river the next morning. Adrian has not said much today, but the day has only just begun. For once, Jongin does not turn away when Adrian strips down, and he does not expect Adrian to look away when he removed his own clothes.

They climb into the cold stream together. Jongin watches Adrian’s head disappear beneath the surface before he comes back up, running his hands through his wet hair. He gives Jongin a small smile.

Blushing, Jongin turns away in the water to wash his shoulders. He then feels Adrian’s fingers on his back.

“You don’t have to,” he says.

“I do not mind,” says Adrian as he dribbles a handful of water onto Jongin’s back before he presses a soft, warm kiss against the back of Jongin’s shoulder. He shudders and leans back against the man’s chest as Adrian draws a hand along a side of his torso under the water.

“Jongin,” whispers Adrian in a breath, his beard pricking the curve of Jongin’s neck.

Then all of a sudden, the man withdraws from him. Jongin turns to face him and finds Adrian frowning disappointedly.

“Adrian?” calls Jongin, blinking.

The man sighs. “I think I’m clean enough.” He does not wait for Jongin as he makes his way out of the water and starts getting dressed again on the shore.

Jongin stays a little longer in the river, whose current is slower than usual. “Are you upset with me, too?” he asks. The river forms little ripples around him, as though to offer comfort.

Jongin drags a hand down his arm, staring in confusion. Why is the river extending solace when nothing has happened? Or is it comfort to soften an impending blow?

“You have all lost it,” Jongin huffs and climbs out of the water. Adrian has disappeared behind the trees. While pulling his trousers on, Jongin scowls at the forest around him. “I do not understand what I have done to merit this treatment. But do as you wish. My conscience is clear.”

He is a fae. Not a tree. He has needs and desires, too. Is it so wrong that he has finally given into some pleasures of the body?

“I love him,” he says to the wind when he hears it. “It is not wrong to love someone.”

It really isn’t. Even Pathe would find that agreeable. It is not a crime to love. But Pathe would certainly disapprove of Jongin’s decision to love a man.

Except that it hasn’t been Jongin’s decision at all. He likes to think that he has had no choice or say in whom his heart decides to fall for.

“You shan’t begrudge me for something I hold no power over,” he tells the trees as he stomps toward the grotto.

The winds have gone quiet again. The river, too. The trees haven’t interacted with him since yesterday.

Jongin, for the first time ever, ignores their grievances and proceeds to the hut.

“What would you like to have?” he asks Adrian, who is kneeling by the fireplace, staring at the dying embers. “I can make some mushroom stew.”

Adrian is not listening, so he does not respond. Jongin walks over to him and settles a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Is everything all right?” he inquires.

Adrian rises back to his full height and smiles faintly. “Yes. I would like some mushroom stew.”

* * *

“Where did you get this from?” Jongin asks, touching his fingertips to the old scar on Adrian’s waistline.

“A swordfight,” says Adrian dully.

“You are a swordfighter?” asks Jongin, not sounding all that surprised. Someone with a physique like Adrian’s has to be a warrior of some sort. And his rough hands are a dead giveaway.

He is sitting on top of Adrian, straddling the man’s hips, wearing nothing but a flimsy piece of tunic. He is weary. They both are, but neither wants to go to sleep.

“A very good one,” says Adrian, dragging his hands up and down Jongin’s thighs.

Jongin presses his hands to the thick pads of Adrian’s muscled chest. “Is this conceit or confidence?”

“Perhaps a bit of both.” He brings a hand to tuck a lock of Jongin’s hair behind the fae’s ear. He does not retrieve his hand immediately as he lets his fingers brush against the ear for a moment. “I am certain there is a bit of both in you, too.”

Jongin flushes. “No, I do not,” he says. “I do not think I have anything to be conceited or confident about.”

Although Adrian’s confidence is incredibly infectious.

“Now, that is a false statement,” says Adrian. “I fade in the face of your excellence.”

Jongin’s eyes widen. “Are you teasing me?”

Adrian blinks. “No, of course not.”

Jongin feels his face grow hot. Excellence? He does not know about other faes, but _excellence_ is not a word he would associate with himself. Adrian is excellence. Jongin is the opposite of excellence. He is… _humble_ at best.

“I know men and women who would bring down mountains and pay through their noses for someone like you,” says Adrian.

“And what would they intend to do with me?” asks Jongin, eyebrows drawn together.

Adrian sighs. “A lot more than what I have been doing to you.”

Jongin’s ears ring for a beat. “I… do not want that,” he lets out.

Adrian grabs his waist and tosses him onto the pallet before mounting him. “I will not let them,” he says, almost growling.

Jongin can’t help but smile as he drapes his arms around the man’s shoulders. He easily loses himself once again into the kiss when Adrian brings their lips together.

He does not object or refuse when Adrian slides into him again with nothing but spit and yanks the tunic over his head. Is this how all men are pleased? It does not take much, Jongin realizes. Adrian is quite easy to please. All that he demands is complete submission and resilience. And Jongin requires the latter profusely because once Adrian loses himself and his self-control, his thrusts are almost feral. Jongin took the man into his mouth earlier. He had gagged and retched several times, much to his embarrassment, though Adrian had not seemed to mind. He had moaned and grunted every time the head of his length slammed against the back of Jongin’s throat. His hand was constantly gripped around Jongin’s hair at the back of his head.

With each time, Jongin is brought to another level of intimacy that he hadn’t thought was achievable.

Adrian made a pithy joke about Jongin getting a taste of meat in his mouth for the first time later while they were catching their breaths. Jongin has grown to not only understand most of the man’s crude remarks but also appreciate them, though not without turning crimson to the tips of his ears.

The sound of his own ragged breathing deafens his ears. He sinks his fingernails into Adrian’s back, nearly breaking his skin there as the man picks up the pace of his thrusts.

Later, as they are coming down from their high, Jongin softly cards his fingers through Adrian’s long hair while the man rests on top of him, still buried to the hilt inside Jongin.

He has not known peace like this, in spite of having lived the most tranquil life in this forest since he was a child. In just a matter of weeks, he has been exposed to innumerable precious experiences that he might never have encountered had he not chanced upon Adrian.

“Do you,” he asks, drawing his fingertips along the deep cleft of Adrian’s back. “remember what had attacked you?”

Adrian does not answer immediately. He seems to be lost in his thoughts. He eventually exhales a sigh and says, “Men.”

Jongin’s eyes widen, even though he knows for certain that no animal could have administered the kinds of wounds Adrian was bearing when he found the man by the river.

“Why would… men attack you?” asks Jongin. He is not sure why he wants to know now after all this time. Perhaps he is more confident now that Adrian would stay.

Adrian lets out another heavy breath and shifts his head on Jongin’s shoulder. “I was ambushed,” he says. “By men… who are not particularly fond of me.”

“Oh,” mutters Jongin. “What were you doing out here?”

“I was hiking up the mountain,” he says and pauses for a beat. “while hunting mountain lions. I must have gotten washed down by the waterfall.”

Jongin has figured just as much. “You wandered rather far from the nearest human settlement.”

“Yes. My home is actually a lot farther.”

“Where is it?” Jongin finds himself asking.

Adrian does not hesitate to answer. “You wouldn’t know,” he says. “It is a city. A five-day ride on a horse.”

“You were… in a very poor shape when I found you.”

“There was a scuffle,” admits Adrian almost diffidently. He then falls silent again. A moment later, he pulls out of Jongin and draws the blanket over the fae. “I ought to wash up.”

Jongin turns onto his side and winces at the familiar pain in his lower body, which he has come to appreciate, too. “All right.”

Adrian does not speak more about the ambush or what had happened that fateful day as he rises from the pallet and proceeds to the outhouse.

When he returns, he gathers Jongin in his arms and brushes a loving kiss to Jongin’s forehead.

As Jongin lets himself fall asleep, Adrian stays awake, his unsteady breathing causing his chest to rise and fall erratically.

* * *

Jongin rouses to the forest’s silence. No, it is the absence of Adrian’s warmth and the sound of his breathing that awakes him. Cracking an eye open, he looks to the empty space on the pallet next to him. The print of Adrian’s body still lays etched on the sheets. The sun is up. The forest is awake, yet it is silent. More silent than it has been the last couple of days.

Jongin sits up and rubs his eyes on the hilt of his palms before glancing around the hut. He thinks he lets out a small breath and a whisper calling for the man. Drowsily, he picks himself up and pulls on a tunic before wobblily teetering toward the outhouse.

He stops in his tracks when he finds the outhouse vacant.

A small panic begins to rise in his chest. He hurries back into the hut and looks for Adrian’s belongings–his stained clothes, his mucky boots. Jongin fails to place them.

Confused and frankly alarmed, he wends his way out of the hut and eventually climbs out of the grotto. He squints at the morning sun before he turns to the trees.

He is too afraid to even say this out loud. “Where is he?”

The trees are quiet. The air is windless.

Jongin feels the fright that starts to grip around his throat. “Where is he?” he asks again.

When he receives no help, he starts walking.

“Adrian?” he calls out, his voice breaking. He does not shout for the man. He never shouts.

He stops and leans against a tree for a moment. He must stop assuming the worst. Perhaps Adrian has gone to the river or for a walk. Yes, that has to be it.

Jongin returns to the hut and sits on the pallet, hugging his knees to his chest.

And then he waits.

The forest sings again. A woeful song. A doe and a wild hare slink into the hut for the first time in a long while and take a seat near him. The river’s current is so harsh that Jongin can hear it from where his sheltered hut. His ears twitch.

He rises to his feet several hours later and walks out of the grotto.

The canopies are lower than they have ever been. The wind strokes Jongin’s cheek and hair as he pushes forward against it. He is unable to feel the dampness of the soil beneath his feet. He is unable to feel anything but the numbness that is growing rapidly inside him for a moment.

Only when he reaches the weeping willow does he acknowledge the horrid bitterness that is budding in the pit of his stomach.

He drops to his knees under the tree’s vast and arching limbs as the realization comes to him. In the dead of the night, he had felt Adrian’s lips against his. It had been a fleeting kiss, without promise.

He does not fight against the tear that falls from his eye. The leaves on the branches still, as do the wind and the river.

He feels broken. He _is_ broken. And very, very cold.

* * *

# C H A P T E R S I X

The crescent smiles against the cloudless black veil of the night. The cold does little to discomfort Jongin. He is too numb to feel anything else. The forest around him has been enduring his agony for the past few weeks. The winds howl and the branches of the trees keen for every tear that falls from his eyes.

He has not cried in years, and now he can’t seem to stop.

His chest feels so heavy with pain and loneliness. And even though it has been weeks – not that he has kept any count of them – he is unable to expunge the sorrow that has completely overtaken him. He has never felt such sadness before, and he doubts that he will ever recover from it.

Pathe did not mean lightly by what he said about faes making a choice for life. Jongin refuses to believe that his choice is the wrong one. How can something so beautiful and painful be so wrong?

The forest tries its best to console him, but nothing can ebb the hollowness and the anguish that blacken his soul.

He stays away from the grotto as much as he can, even when it is pouring. Every wall, every plank, every crook of the hut is painted with memories that Jongin does not want to remember anymore. Though a part of him wants for them all to be erased, another part of him thinks the pain is preferable compared to having all that memories erased.

Jongin has relinquished all of his virtue to the man he loved. He does not think that there is anything to be ashamed about in that. He may not be the same anymore, he may be broken, but that does not mean he loathes himself for it all.

The forest feels different. His home feels different now. Perhaps his home is incomplete now.

He looks to the squirrels that bring him a few berries and nuts along with a concerned look in their eyes. He has not eaten in a while. He eats very little when he remembers to eat at all.

He leans his head back against the trunk of the willow tree and wipes his eyes on the back of his hands before accepting the berries and nuts from the squirrels.

“Thank you,” his says, and his voice sounds thick and hoarse. He feels pale and cold. He has felt this way for a while, and he cannot wait to find out if he will ever feel like himself again. He wonders if the sorrow will become a part of him until the end of time. And for him, it was very far into the future.

* * *

He does not begrudge Adrian for leaving. In fact, he knew from the very beginning that this could be the only reasonable course of action. And he had thought that he had made peace with that. He has been wrong.

Secretly, quietly, and very selfishly, he was hoping that Adrian would stay. That in spite of everything, Adrian would choose him.

He does not resent the man for abandoning him without a single goodbye, which in hindsight is a good thing, because Jongin does not know if would have been able to handle such an emotional, heart-breaking goodbye. It would have been unbearable. He might have even said and done debasing things, unable to let go of Adrian.

He does, however, wish that Adrian had left behind something to remember him by apart from all these knifing memories.

A few more days pass, and even those memories, though unwilling to fade, begin to seem more like a dream.

Then one day, fate decides to remind him that it is not all just a dream.

The morning starts with a little more misery than usual. Jongin rouses reluctantly, and as soon as he sits up, his head swims violently. He catches himself as he stands, stumbling. He has not taken any meal the night before, yet his empty stomach somehow lurches, and he feels ill.

He does not recall the last time he has felt this way. Faes do not fall sick easily. But he supposes he has not been taking much care of himself lately, which may have caused his faintness.

He tries to eat a little more today, but the pottage that he usually enjoys eating tastes dry and bland on his tongue. In the end, he yields and sets his bowl aside.

He thinks of staying in, but every time he looks at the pallets that are still pushed together he feels even more ill.

He might like some cloudberry-hazelnut soup, he thinks. So, he grabs his basket and makes his way out of the grotto, watching his steps. His vision is a little blurry, possibly from the wooziness.

The trees and winds are quiet today. They do not greet him immediately when he climbed out of the grotto. Their silence makes Jongin curious and anxious, since the forest has been nothing but comforting the last few weeks.

“What is the matter?” he asks one of the trees in a low whisper, lifting a hand to stroke its bark. It lightly thrums against his palm. It tells him nothing more. Sighing, he walks away.

He crouches to the ground when he finds a gathering of cloudberries. While he slowly picks them, the wind starts singing again. Except it is no longer a song of sorrow or solace. It almost sounds… cheery.

Jongin rises back to his full height and glances around the forest, wondering why it is behaving oddly today. He does not understand because he has not seen or heard it act this way before. Ever.

He proceeds to the river to gently wash the cloudberries he has picked. As he kneels on the riverbank and dips his hands into the coursing water. The river’s current is peculiar, too. Jongin frowns at his own reflection in the water.

“What is happening?” he asks the river.

A few joyful ripples form on the surface. Jongin pins them with a baffled look. He does not understand why the forest is so joyous all of a sudden.

He looks at himself in the water once more. Although his complexion remains ashen, and his eyes are swollen and tired, there is a certain sheen to it all. He somehow looks different, and it does not make him feel any better.

He stands up and returns to the hut, realizing that the forest is being no help today.

* * *

He feels the same way the next morning. His head is light, and his body is sore. He has the leftover cloudberry-hazelnut soup from yesterday for breakfast, and he is pleased with it. He spends most of the morning, as usual, reminiscing the days he had spent with Adrian.

His appetite returns to him after several days, but he no longer enjoys many of the foods he used to love. He realizes that his hunger is only sated when he gives in to these odd cravings.

His basket is full of the sourest berries, leaves and fruits. He thinks about harvesting some more honey today, but his body somehow holds him back from nearing the beehive. It did the same thing when he thought of climbing the mountain that is infested with perilous wild beasts the other day. And the river had also forced him to stay his ground when he tried to cross it.

Today, the trees are making way for him, and the forest floor makes sure that Jongin finds whatever he is looking for without having to look too hard.

The weeping willow whistles as Jongin approaches it. Its cascading leaves bristle against him gently. He is not sure why the entire forest and the winds have been treating him so delicately in the last few days. It does little to alleviate his sorrows, though. He does not cry himself to sleep anymore, but his heart is still painfully heavy, and not a day goes by where he does not wake up in the morning or the middle of the night hoping to find Adrian at his side again.

Sometimes as he lays awake and sleepless, he even wonders if he is haunting Adrian’s thoughts and dreams as the man is frequenting his.

He stops and looks to the weeping willow for a moment before he sits down and leans against it. He grabs a blackberry from basket and pops it into his mouth. The sourness of the fruit only delights him.

As the day slowly ages around him, he closes his eyes and lets the wind stroke his hair.

He must find a way to move on, as difficult and unbearable as it may seem at the moment. All his life, even when Pathe was still alive, he had believed that he would need nothing more than the forest and his peace. He wants to wish that the man had never entered his life, that he had never found Adrian by the river that day. He wants to turn back time and stop himself from falling for the man, if it is even possible at all. He should not have opened his heart for another. Especially when, deep inside, he knew that it will not last.

Now, all that he can do is wait for each empty day to come to an end, so that he can fall asleep. But even then, his dreams are haunted by Adrian. Jongin can no longer distinguish between those dreams and his memories of the man.

When he opens his eyes again, he finds his hand pressed to his belly. He rubs it absentmindedly and sighs. He gets hungry now at least. And he has been eating quite a bit the last couple of days.

He thinks in spite of having sulked in misery for weeks, he has put some weight on his cheeks when he regards his reflection. Slowly, his skin is also returning to his normal complexion.

* * *

It is not until several more weeks later does he notice other anomalies and peculiarities. He feels sick – like he wants to heave last night’s meal – most mornings. No matter how much eats, even though he has been eating a lot more than usual, he keeps feeling hungry. His ankles are swollen for some reason, and the smell of mint leaves nauseates him greatly.

And then one morning, as he stands on the river’s shore, clothing himself after a bath, he notices the bulge in his belly. He has put on a little more weight, but the rest of his body does not match the lightly swollen belly.

He touches it, as he unconsciously does regularly nowadays. It does not take him too long to realize what is happening to his body when he finally decides to not to ignore the signals.

He sits down on the ground and looks at the river vacantly. And he does not move for a long while. A different kind of sorrow swells in his chest, and he grieves in complete silence.

Pathe had told him before that some – not all – faes are blessed with the ability to reproduce, regardless of their gender. Those who are graced with such a blessing are sparse and few, which is why there are very little faes left in this world. Even those that can bear offspring do not always successfully deliver them. Moreover, many faes choose to live in solitude. And now, they are facing imminent extinction.

Pathe did not speak anything about faes copulating with men. He forbade it, of course. He would not approve of anything that concerned men.

But if Jongin is right about his current state – and he is – then he is with a man’s child. Is that even possible? Would the child be part man and part fae? Or would it be something abominable?

Jongin closes his eyes before they can well up with tears. He loathes himself for even thinking such a thing about an innocent life. It is borne out of love. How can it be anything but beautiful?

He picks himself up after a while and returns to the hut to make something warm to eat.

* * *

Later that night, he touches his belly, lying on his side. He does not know how he feels about this situation. He has been trying to think about what he feels or what he should be feeling at least, but he is too fatigued to think much.

He has been quiet all day, holed up in his hut. There are some animals there with him, but they do not bother him for attention. He thinks that they are there to just to keep an eye on him, which is what the forest has been doing for the past few weeks. He has only realized that today, too. The other day, a tree branch had caught him when he almost tripped. The river slows its current every time he climbs into the water.

“I wish you were here,” he whispers, staring forlornly into the darkness of the hut. He is not sure who he means – Pathe or Adrian. He supposes either one would have made him feel better. He would not be so lonely. He should not sound so ungrateful and unfair to the forest, after all that it has been doing to help him recover and keep him safe. But he has been wrong. He needs more than just the forest. He feels miserable, and this misery seems like an endless road.

He curls into a ball on the pallets, forcing away the tears that burn his eyes. “I cannot do this alone,” he whimpers. He does not know how to do this alone. No one taught him that. He might find his way one day, but for now, he is lost and afraid.

There. That is how he feels about his situation. He is scared of doing something wrong. He is concerned about the future. It suddenly seems so uncertain. He wants to weep, but he does not want to hurt the forest any more than he already has.

* * *

He has a pleasant dream that night. It might have even been from a memory, but Jongin can longer tell them apart. He is sitting on Adrian, straddling his hips. His hands are on the man’s wide, muscled chest, fingers tracing the small, traceable scars hiding beneath the little hairs of his chest.

He is wearing Adrian’s shirt – the one he was wearing when Jongin found him – and its laces are undone. Adrian’s hands are sitting comfortably on the sides of Jongin’s waist, and his lips are peppering Jongin’s neck with soft, tender kisses while he mutters sweet nothings. And even those nothings make Jongin blush embarrassingly.

He lifts one of his hands and slides it into Adrian’s thick mane-like hair, arching his neck to receive more kisses. They are making it incredibly difficult for him to breathe or think. Even in his dreams, he can feel the warmth of Adrian’s body. That is how much everything about the man is already etched into Jongin’s memories.

He still remembers the heat of Adrian’s body, the scent of his skin, the way his hair feels as it slides between Jongin’s fingers, the way his beard scrapes Jongin’s skin, leaving it red and tingling, the way his lips taste, the way his callused hands grip Jongin.

He holds onto Adrian in his dream, not wanting to let go and never wanting to wake up. He supposes that there is nothing to complain about if he really does not wake up again.

He pulls back a little as Adrian presses his hand to Jongin’s belly.

That is when Jongin wakes up with a jolt, covered in sweat, body burning, eyes watery, throat parched. He scrambles out of the pallet and almost trips over a sleeping rabbit on his way to get some water.

Once his thirst is quenched, he leans back against the shelves and catches his breath.

He truly cannot do this alone. And even if he can, he does not want to. He will spend the rest of his life being unhappy with this dreary grey cloud over his head. He has to do something about it.

He has to leave.

The forest hears his thought almost instantly. Even from his hut, Jongin can hear the sudden silence that drowns the forest. He does not know if he will ever be forgiven for this, but he cannot stay. For now.

He will return one day, certainly. And he is determined to return _with_ Adrian.

He waits for the first light to start packing. There is not much to pack. He bundles up some food, clothes, and filled waterskins in a cloth. When the sun is a little higher in the sky, he will start hiking up the mountain. It will not take him too long to reach the roads if he leaves soon.

As soon as he steps out of the grotto, however, he is overcome by a new fear. His body refuses to move for a moment. He looks to the forest for support in the moment. He will not be able to make it out of here without its help. He needs solace. He needs a word of encouragement.

He has never left home, and he never thought that he ever will. Even taking another step away from his grotto makes his head spin in horror.

The wind gently slaps against his back then, nudging him forward.

He has to do this. He has to find his peace again.

He stands still for a moment, biting his lip, a hand touching his belly. “I must do this,” he says, swallowing the sob in his throat. “I must go.”

The leaves on the branches rustle then. The forest will come to his aid if he asks for it, even though it is as horrified as him and fairly dismayed by this sudden turn of events.

The rabbits, deer, squirrels and chipmunks follow him as he advances a step. He takes in a deep breath and tells himself to have courage.

_Have courage._

_Have a lot of courage._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Animal abuse

# C H A P T E R S E V E N

Braving the mountain is no easy task, but Jongin reckons that it is heaps easier than braving what comes next.

Even before mankind had come into existence, the mountain has dwelled here. Its greatness and magnificence are tough even for the strongest of woodland creatures to meet head on. The rough terrains and fearsome beasts that abide there have Jongin taking each of his steps with great caution and vigilance.

Every critter and creature he comes across on his way he befriends. Some, he steers clear of. He doubts that a mountain lion, this far up in the mountain, will take kindly to him, even if he is a fae.

Jongin begins to realize that with each step, he is venturing farther away from his safe and serene home. But the determination in his heart does not waver. He tries not to look over his shoulder, even though it is very tempting to see what he is leaving behind for the man he loves.

The nights are colder up in the mountain. He has not packed much to keep him warm. So, he tries to take as much warmth as he can from the mountain animals that curl up around him, hoping to share his warmth.

When the morning comes, he proceeds onwards. He eats what he finds along the way. He only rests when the darkness of the dusk befalls the land.

He often whistles or taps woody sticks together to make as much noise as he can to keep away the grizzlies. A week later, the expedition starts proving to be harder than he had thought.

He feels sick in the morning and increasingly weary through the day.

He had not been thinking much when he decided to leave home to look for Adrian. He might be too naïve to believe that he could find Adrian simply by sheer willpower. But he has to try. Even if it isn’t for him, then for the life that is growing inside of him. If Adrian comes to know of it, he will certainly return, won’t he?

He eats what he forages and sleeps on whatever bed of fern and dry patch of soil he finds for the next few days. He listens to the wind and the trees for guidance. Their companionship is all that he has to get to where he wishes to go. He remembers coming across the manmade road on a trek with Pathe when he was a very young fae. He does not remember much about it, but he remembers Pathe warning him to never go anywhere near it.

Jongin wonders if Pathe will ever forgive him for disregarding his warnings and disobeying his teachings. If he had been alive, he might have kept Jongin from committing one mistake after another. He must be very disappointed in Jongin for not only having trusted a _man_ , but for leaving his sanctuary in search of something uncertain.

Jongin’s life has been plagued with uncertainties ever since his meeting with Adrian. Still, he does not regret saving Adrian’s life that day. He does not rue the virtue he has relinquished to the man. He does not resent anything that has happened since meeting Adrian because he knows and believes wholeheartedly that Adrian is a good man.

He left without saying goodbye. But a goodbye would have hurt more. Jongin isn’t sure that he would have let Adrian go. He might have begged. He would have promised anything for the man to stay. And if he has absolutely nothing to offer to Adrian to make him stay, then he would have even considered leaving his home to follow where the man is going.

He is no longer a sane fae, and it is all that he knows. Love turns even the sanest of minds.

* * *

With each day, as the grief slowly evanesces, some clarity returns to him.

“How will I find him?” he asks the tree he is leaning against, popping a berry into his mouth. “I do not know anything about him except his name.”

He drops his head back against the tree’s trunk and groans at the thud. The tree’s branches rustle above him, telling him to not to hurt himself like that again.

He sighs. “What will I do?” he asks. He was not expecting an answer, however, for that not even the great mountain can give him one.

His misgivings are not enough for him to turn back. He is determined to find Adrian, if it takes him weeks, months or years. He does not know if he has the strength or the tenacity for it, but he believes that he has the firmness of purpose for now, and it is enough to get him far enough.

* * *

It takes him a few more days – if he has been keeping the right count of sunrises and sunsets – to reach the thinning copses of trees. The air is a little difficult to breathe in here. Something about the aridness carried in the wind makes Jongin nervous.

He has lost the will to speak in the last couple of days, even to the forest or the wind. His tongue feels like sand, and his heart feels heavier than a boulder. He is wondering if he is beginning to lose hope.

And right then, he sees the endless strip of treeless dirt past the trees. A path. A road. Not frequented enough by men, but it is manmade, and it will certainly take Jongin to where he wishes to go.

He climbs over a mound of grassy ground before he finally emerges from the trees. He stops with a start, his feet wanting to turn on their heels. He can feel his heart pounding frightfully in his chest.

He takes in a deep breath, looking to the road once more. He then glances to his left and right to see where the road leads. Looking up at the sky, he finds the sun setting in the west. He must take the road that struck westwards to go to wherever hunters come from during the hunting season.

He isn’t sure that he will find Adrian there, but it is a start. He does not know how big the world is, but he is willing to go to every nook and cranny of it to find the man he loves.

As afraid and bewildered as he is, Jongin knows that there is no turning back. So, he clutches his wrapped bundle of clothes and other necessities, he steps onto the road.

The dirt is rougher and firmer than what the soles of his feet are used to, but it is still dirt, nonetheless, though ridden with gravels and stones he has to try not to step on.

Now he knows why men don footwear.

The sky rapidly darkens, and he decides that it isn’t safe to linger on the road for too long. The trees on either side of the road are thinning with every step he advances. The forest speaks less and less to him.

“I am not afraid,” Jongin tells himself at some point during the night, even though the pace of his heartbeat clearly disagrees.

He stops abruptly, heart nearly jumping out of his chest, when he hears the sound of something clattering in the distance. He turns and squints down the road before he spies a mule-drawn wagon.

He knows that it is a wagon because Pathe had built one himself before. Although he did not need the help of a mule to take it anywhere.

On top of the wagon, a man – the oldest Jongin has ever seen – sits, whistling a tired tune.

Drawing a cloak out of the bundle, Jongin quickly pulls it over his head. He would like to attract as little attention as possible, especially when he has no clue of what to do when he encounters strange men. He then walks slowly along the side of the road, making himself as unnoticeable as he can in the dark.

As the wagon rattles closer, he swallows hard and keeps his head held low.

When he hears the wagon slowing as it nears him, he considers running away. He manages to stay his feet, however, and glance to the man who is yanking the reins of his mule.

“Heading towards the village, young lad?” he asks Jongin.

He has a strange lilt to his speech, which Jongin did not hear in Adrian’s. He sports a frizzy white beard and a ridiculous brown hat.

Jongin does not know if he should reply. Perhaps he shouldn’t. Perhaps he would be better off running away.

But he finds himself saying, “Yes… I think so.”

The village may be a good place to start looking for Adrian. Although Jongin recalls Adrian telling him that he hails from a _city_ full of all kinds of people.

Jongin does not know how far that city is, though.

He will run out of water and food before long. He will find none of those on this road anytime soon.

Perhaps he should ask the old man for directions.

“Need a ride?” the man offers, which completely shocks Jongin.

He supposes that the man is offering him a favour, unless he has understood the situation differently. If the former is the case, then it is mighty kind of the old man. Pathe was perhaps wrong about some of them.

“To… the village?” asks Jongin, just to make sure.

“Yes. I’m heading that way,” says the old man, arching an eyebrow. He is now staring at Jongin’s bare feet. “It cannot be a pleasant deal for you to walk that far without any shoes on.”

Jongin flushes with embarrassment. “I do not own any,” he mutters.

The old man snickers. “And I do not own any underpants. I suppose we’re two of the same kind. Climb aboard!”

Jongin hesitates. He looks back at the forest, and he listens to the wind. They do not warn him or discourage him from accepting the man’s favour.

Still, it does not ease Jongin’s concerns. If he is discovered, he does not know what horrid things might happen to him.

“How long does it take to get to the village?” he asks the man politely.

“A day and half from here,” says the man, patting the mule’s rump. “Pixie here might be an old gal, but she can pull her weight.”

Jongin glances to the tawny mule. She briefly turns to him with a bored look before turning away again. “And how about on foot?”

The old man sighs. “A week or two. Do you want a ride or not, boy? You are wasting my time, and I haven’t got much of that left.”

Jongin worries his lower lip for a moment before nodding. Anything to get to Adrian, right? He cannot let his fears and concerns delay him any further.

He clambers up onto the wagon – it is nothing compared to all the trees he’s climbed.

He holds onto his bundle as the old man reins his mule to go forth. The wagon rocks under them, and Jongin tries to keep his balance.

“So, where are you from?” asks the old man, though he does not sound all that interested. Perhaps he is simply making conversation to break the silence, as Adrian often did when they were sitting awkwardly together in the hut with nothing to say to one another, even though there was so much they _wanted_ to say.

Jongin tries to think of a proper answer for a moment. One that will not arouse any suspicion. He tugs at the cloak over his head to hide his ears well.

“Just nearby,” he ends up saying, imitating Adrian, who was a master at answering Jongin’s questions with vague responses.

“Mysterious,” says the old man, clicking his tongue. Jongin looks back to the crates and sacks in the wagon. “Do you have a name, lad?”

Jongin nods. “It’s Jongin.”

The old man makes a face. “What an unusual name…”

Jongin blushes, remembering Adrian’s own reaction when he first learned his name.

“It’s… um, quite common where I come from.” It is a lie, but Jongin does not know if it is a good one. He is no expert when it comes to lying.

“Well, mine’s Oscar.”

“Nice to meet you, Oscar.” He draws his legs up and hugs his knees to his chest.

Oscar, as it turns out, is quite chatty. Jongin is not sure what to make of it yet. Adrian was never this chatty. He has always been the brooding, quiet one, who occasionally shared quip or two that usually confused Jongin.

He exhales heavily. Oh, how he misses Adrian…

Pathe would have thought him crazy. Completely out of his mind. Unhinged. Barking mad. For not only talking to a human, but for riding alongside one, leaving his safe, peaceful home far behind.

* * *

The rocky ride is incredibly nauseating, and as the sun starts to come up, Jongin decides to ask Oscar to pull over so that he can heave on the side of the road.

“Not feeling too well, eh?” asks the old man as he hands Jongin the waterskin to rinse his mouth.

Once he is done, Jongin straightens up with a guilty look. “No,” he admits, touching his belly, though he quickly drops his hand back to his side.

“You ought to eat something.” The man quickly rummages through his belongings in the wagon and pulls out a well-wrapped package. “It’s just a heel of stale bread, but it’ll fill a stomach good.”

Jongin eagerly stares as Oscar unwraps the _bread_ , which Adrian used to speak of. It isn’t at all what Jongin had expected. It looks like a hunk of wood on the outside, though it appears to be soft and white on the inside.

It tastes like dirt, though much firmer and harder to chew.

Jongin does not complain. He has learned to live on what he finds, and Oscar is right. The _bread_ does fill his belly fast.

“Thank you very much,” he says to the old man. “I am eternally grateful.”

“For a slice of bread?” scoffs Oscar. “Now, let’s not be melodramatic, my boy. Get on, then. We best be on our way, or these goods won’t reach the traders in time.”

Feeling a lot better, Jongin climbs onto the wagon, and they are on their way again.

* * *

There are more people on the road now. Some are riding on wagons and carriages, others are mounted on horses or are travelling by feet. Jongin can’t help but scrutinize every one of them with great curiosity. So far, he hasn’t seen one that even remotely resembles Adrian.

Men on the road, generally, are short and stout. They are clad in uninspiring garments with a mean, unfriendly curl on their lips. Some of them return Jongin’s look, but most of them are too preoccupied with their own thoughts to notice him.

“What is your business at the village?” Oscar inquires when the sun is burning bright in the sky.

Jongin has thought of what he might say if the question is raised. “I am visiting a friend,” he says.

“Ah. You do not look well-prepared to be visiting a friend so far away from home.”

Jongin gnawed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. “It was… a bit of a rushed decision.”

“I see. Is it a lady friend?”

There is a mischievous grin on the man’s face.

Jongin shakes his head lightly. “No.”

“Then not a matter of love,” sighs Oscar, as though he is talking to himself. “Can’t really think of a reason why a young lad like yourself might run away from home then.”

He pauses for a beat before glancing to Jongin again.

“Have you ever been to the village before?”

“No. It will be my first time,” answers Jongin, seeing no reason to lie to the man now.

“Will your friend be expecting you?”

Jongin shakes his head again.

Oscar raises an eyebrow. “How do you intend on finding him then?”

“I… do know,” mutters Jongin, hanging his head.

“It does not seem like you planned this through, son.”

Jongin frowns. “I did tell you – it was a rushed decision.”

“Hmm.” He shrugs. “Well, it is a rather small village. Perhaps you will find your friend without too much of a hassle.”

Jongin dearly hopes that the old man is right.

Oscar tells him all about his big family. He has a wife named Eunice, and five children – two boys and three girls. He already has four grandchildren, whom he is mighty grateful for, he says.

“I am a very blessed man,” he says, and Jongin cannot help but smile at the man’s optimism and great fortune.

If men are so cruel and spiteful – as Pathe believed – then why is fate so kind to them?

Perhaps Adrian holds the right faith. Perhaps not all men are cruel. Oscar certainly isn’t. If he is, would the fate smile like so upon him and his wonderful family?

He tells Jongin a bit more about how handful his grandchildren can be. He loves them, nonetheless, he says.

“We have been wood carvers for five generations,” says Oscar.

Jongin blinks. “Wood carvers?”

“Yes. My entire family carves wood. Figurines, statues, weapon handles, pots, plates, whatnot. Then we sell them to interested traders.”

“Oh.” Jongin glances back at the trunks in the wagon. “Do you… cut down trees for the wood?” He cannot help but ask.

“Well, yes, of course,” chuckles Oscar. “Where will the wood come from then?!”

Jongin feels sick again. “Oh.” He hugs his knees to his chest and falls silent.

“Is something wrong?” asks Oscar.

Jongin lifts his head and regards the man’s concerned expression. Swallowing, he says, “I just… do not understand why… men insist on harming nature for their selfish purposes.”

As soon as he says it, he wants to pick those words up and stuff them back into his mouth.

Oscar pins him with a curious look. “Are you talking about… the trees? Are you one of those enthusiasts who care too much for the environment?”

“What?”

Oscar laughs. “The nature is there to serve us. Just as we are there to serve nature. It is a big cycle. Sometimes, we take more than we should. But doesn’t nature do the same? I lost an uncle in a thunderstorm. My son lost a leg at sea. And don’t even get me started on the plague that took the lives of many innocent children.”

Jongin is unable to blink his eyes. “Nature… does not hurt us.”

The old man laughs again. “My mother who died from a very strange illness many years ago will beg to differ. Look, kid. I am not saying that it is fair of us to hurt the environment. We only take what we need to survive. Without those trees, my family would starve. As such is the world, isn’t it?”

“It seems like a very cruel and unfair world,” says Jongin, although his chest is tight from listening to the man’s grievances. “I’m sorry for your losses.”

Oscar waves him off. “You don’t have to be. You didn’t cause any of that. You should hold onto your beliefs, though. Don’t let my faith and words waver them. But no one is faultless in this world, son. Not you, not me. Not nature.”

Jongin supposes that the man has a point. Especially for someone who does not have the insights as Jongin does. He understands nature, and he knows that nature hasn’t always been kind to everyone in this world. Sometimes, the world is unfair. If it isn’t, he would not be here right now. He would not be so far away from his home, looking for a man, while carrying his child.

But he knows better than to blame someone else for his choices. They have been his and his alone. No one forced him to fall in love with Adrian.

“We make do with what the nature has given us,” says Oscar. “Otherwise, we’d all be dead.”

Jongin does not argue any further.

* * *

# C H A P T E R E I G H T

The air smells different here. Very different. Jongin can longer smell his home, his forest. He is so far away from the mountains. And the wind is warm, quiet. The arid air starts to wear him out. The scorching sun in the sky makes his throat feel parched.

He thinks of getting out of his cloak for a moment, but he cannot afford to expose himself. Uncertainties and anxiety begin to fill his stomach, twisting and turning it almost painfully.

He has been in the grace of Oscar’s kindness for the last two days. Where he comes from, favours are not expected to be returned, though there is gratitude in every breath. But he knows that it isn’t the same in the men’s world. Oscar, however, has made it clear several times that he does not expect compensations from Jongin.

The closer they get to the village, the noisier it is. Jongin can hardly bear the din of it all. He sees people everywhere, and they all look very different from one another that he does not think he can remember anyone.

No one pays any heed to the wagon rattling into the village. Jongin instantly notices the little houses made of stone and wood with various kinds of roofs. They are an eyesore.

There isn’t a single living tree in sight. Everything is sandy-brown and sombre grey.

“Well,” says Oscar as he reins the mule to a halt. “here we are.”

Jongin glances to the building they have stopped before. The signboard says, _Henrik’s General Store._

“Give me a hand, will you?” asks Oscar, clambering down the wagon. Jongin quickly follows suit and helps the old man lift the trunks in the wagon into the building.

Jongin has to pause for a moment to marvel at the things that reside in the building. It has to be one of those places where men purchase their goods. Pathe told him that men _pay_ for goods and services. With money. It is a form of bartering, he said. And the more money one has, the more powerful he is.

There are so many different kinds of items in there, most of which Jongin cannot even seem to fathom. He holds his breath. He isn’t sure if he is curious and excited, or just horrified.

Some of the jars on the shelves are holding preserves, he thinks. Just like the one he makes at home. With sour berries and sickly-sweet honey. Oh, he would love some cloudberry jam right about now.

He then glances to the countless wrapped packages, wondering what they may be.

“Oscar!”

Jongin jumps with a start when a man enters the room with a funny-looking hairstyle. He blinks languidly, staring at the clever patterns the man has shaven into the sides of his head. The top and back of his head hold such beautiful long strands of brown hair. He sports a beard, much like Adrian’s, although much better kempt.

“What have you got this time?” the man asks, dusting the whitish powder on his hands as he walks around the counter.

“Many things,” says Oscar, opening one of the trunks to reveal a pile of wooden things, shaped and fashioned in all sorts of manner. Ladles, spoons, plates, and bowls, along with a few other things Jongin does not recognize. “Quality wares, as always.”

“Hmm. As always,” hums the other man from behind the counter. His gaze then flits over Oscar’s shoulder and lands on Jongin.

Immediately, Jongin tenses and lowers his head, hoping that his cowl would hide his face, as he remains behind the shelves.

“Who might this be?” asks the shopkeeper.

“Oh,” lets out Oscar. “Just a companion for the roads this time.”

Jongin lifts his gaze to see the shopkeeper’s arched eyebrow. “Never seen him around here before,” says the other man.

Oscar shrugs. “Neither have I.”

“You got a name?”

Oh, no. _He is talking to me,_ Jongin thinks, heart pounding. It will be stranger to not to answer his question. Swallowing hard, he diffidently says, “Jongin.”

The shopkeeper is silent for a moment. “Would you like to buy something… Jongin?”

Jongin shakes his head. “I don’t have any… _money_.”

Oscar leans over the counter as though to whisper. “Ran away from home, I reckon,” he tells the shopkeeper. “Says he’s looking for a friend here.”

“I see,” says the shopkeeper, straightening up. Jongin tries to keep his head low. “Does this friend of yours have a name?”

Jongin is surely in a ditch now. But he has to try his luck, anyway. “His name is… Adrian.”

The shopkeeper looks confused. “And his last name?”

Jongin frowns. “I… I don’t know.”

“So, you have come this far with nothing but a name?” asks the shopkeeper, and Jongin feels incredibly foolish all of a sudden.

The two men look at him doubtfully. “Know anyone of that name around here?” Oscar asks the shopkeeper.

The other man shrugs, shaking his head. “No. Not in this village.”

Jongin’s heart sinks, even though he knew the chances of finding Adrian this fast were very slim.

Oscar sighs. “Perhaps he is from the next village,” he tells Jongin, as though reassuringly. “I won’t be going that way, but I’m sure we can find you a horse or a pony.”

Jongin does not know how to ride one, so he politely refuses. “That’s all right. I have given you enough trouble, and you have done me more favours than I can return. I do not wish to burden you any further. Thank you. I will find my way from here.”

Oscar does not look pleased, but he nods. “Very well.” He turns to the shopkeeper again and says something to him in a voice too low for Jongin to hear.

The shopkeeper exhales heavily. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Take pity on the poor boy, will you?” says Oscar.

“I am no charity house, old man,” says the other man, rolling his eyes. Jongin bites his tongue, realizing they are talking about him, and that the shopkeeper does not seem all too happy about whatever Oscar is pleading out of him.

He hands Oscar a small but fat pouch and bids him a safe journey home. The old man walks over to Jongin with a solemn expression.

“I hope you find who you’ve come looking for, son,” he says. “And here’s something to help you.”

He fishes out a couple of bronze coins from the pouch and holds them out to Jongin.

“I can’t accept that,” says Jongin. Not only does he not want to be a part of mankind’s petty system for bartering, he does not wish to take a portion of the reward for the poor man and his family’s hard work. “You need it. To feed your family.”

He takes the man’s hand in his and gently closes it around the coins.

“I will find my way,” Jongin says again, though he is incredibly touched that a stranger – a man no less – is treating him with such kindness.

Will he extend the same kind of generosity towards a fae? Jongin does not want to find out. Not yet.

“Then all I can do is wish you good luck, my boy,” says Oscar, sighing.

Jongin accepts it with a humble bow of his head. He could use every bit of luck he can get.

Oscar does not linger around any longer than he needs to. Jongin stands at the entrance of the shop, watching the old man drive his wagon away. He wishes the man and his family nothing but good fortune. Jongin has now seen the kindness mankind is capable of. Not all of them are a lost cause, as Pathe had told him many times before.

He looks down to where his hand is pressed against his stomach.

“If you do not intend on buying anything,” a startling gruff voice says from behind. Jongin turns around to meet the shopkeeper’s annoyed frown. “I suggest you take off.”

Jongin nods. “I’m sorry.”

This behaviour he has expected. The instant the shopkeeper realizes that Jongin is of no value to him and his business, he sees no point in niceties and pleasantries.

Jongin tries not to let the man intimidate him, although the man looks intimidating enough to scare away a stag. He is very tall and broad-shouldered. He isn’t as buff or burly as Adrian, but he is certainly bigger than any other men Jongin has encountered so far.

“I… I’ll leave,” mutters Jongin as he turns on his heel and starts to aimlessly walk into the street. He receives a few looks, but none that linger.

Where to now?

He supposes he can go looking for the nearby village Oscar spoke of. He isn’t sure how far that is, or how he will get there.

He doesn’t realize that he is standing in the middle of the street until a woman, pushing a wheelbarrow, screeches at him to get out of the way.

He steps aside and frowns at the sickening feeling that grows in his stomach.

“Did you have to flee your home so hastily that you forgot your shoes?”

Jongin turns and looks at the shopkeeper, who is standing still with his arms crossed and eyebrows furrowed, his eyes fixated on Jongin’s bare feet.

He then huffs exasperatedly before storming back into his shop without saying another word.

Jongin slowly walks toward the narrow alley next to the shop and lowers himself to a crouch, hugging his arms around his knees.

A small, soft wind catches the strands of his hair, and he smiles. “It’ll be all right,” he whispers to himself while he idly watches the villagers scurry about on the street.

* * *

He waits until it is dark enough to explore the village – when there are less eyes to avoid. There is music in the distance. It makes Jongin’s skin tingle curiously. He wonders where it is coming from.

Most of the villagers are now inside. Jongin sees light from the open windows of their homes. The smell of food in the air makes his mouth water and stomach rumble. He hasn’t eaten all day. And he is so far away from the forest, where he can forage for food.

The ground is warm beneath the soles of his feet, even in the evening.

He stops abruptly when he hears a sound, coming from one of the dark alleys.

“Yes, do it!” a man says, chuckling. Another is laughing with him. Then Jongin hears the agonized whimpering of an animal.

Curious and a little concerned, Jongin starts toward the alley. His heart breaks in half when he sees a slurring man, his foot pinning a dog to the ground. And as it struggles to break free, the man and his companion laugh at its expense.

“Stop that, please,” rasps Jongin, without thinking, and lurches forward.

The men halt and turn towards him at once, both blinking in surprise. “What?” one of them says.

“You are… hurting it,” says Jongin, his voice breaking. He cannot take his watery eyes off the writhing dog beneath the man’s boot. “Please. Why are you doing that?”

“What do you care?!” spat the other man – the one who has the poor animal pinned. “Go away.”

Jongin cannot. He does not have the heart, even though he is utterly terrified for his own safety, to leave the pitiful thing to be tormented like so.

“Have you no heart?” he asks, a tear rolling down his cheek. “How could anyone do that to an innocent, helpless creature?!”

He finds himself speaking louder.

“Is he for real?” one of the two men scoffs. “We said, get lost before _you_ get hurt, too.”

Jongin takes a step closer. “Let it go.”

The men laugh. “It should have thought about the consequences before trying to steal from the tavern supplies.”

“It must have been hungry,” says Jongin.

“One less filthy dog would do the place some good.”

“No! Stop!”

“Will you take its place since you care so much for this mangy bitch?”

“Wh-What?”

Jongin is unable to believe his eyes or ears. Of course, he knows all about the hunters who kill animals for a sport. This is no different.

Pathe was right about men taking pleasure in hurting those who are innocent.

The dog whimpers louder when the man presses his foot deeper into its neck.

“No!” cries Jongin, lunging at the man foolishly.

It takes him a moment to register the blow he takes to a side of his head. It all happens so fast that he does not even see it coming.

He knocks against the alley wall and gasps for air while his head spins for a moment.

“Who the fuck are you?” asks the man who had struck him. Jongin swallows and shakes his head to clear his vision. “You picked the wrong day to play stray-saviour.”

Jongin braces himself for the second blow, but it does not come to him.

When he opens his eyes again, he sees a shadow towering before him. He blinks and looks to the shopkeeper who is gripping the other man’s arm, that is meant to strike Jongin, mid-air.

“I think your father has been looking for you drunk assholes,” says the shopkeeper, his voice dropping to a menace. “So, you can either walk home right now, or I can break your legs and carry you home.”

The two men retreat at once, cursing under their breath.

Jongin breathes again, though he isn’t very sure that he should feel relieved. He glances to the dog that is lying limply on the ground, unmoving and unbreathing.

“No,” lets out Jongin, dropping to his knees. He touches the dog’s fur and looks for its soul in its eyes. He does not find it.

Closing his own eyes, he breaks into a sob. Everything hurts all of a sudden. His head, his heart, his stomach, his chest. He has witnessed the death of many animals before, of course. But those had been a part of nature. They were not killed for entertainment by men.

“Are you all right?” a familiar voice asks in the dark.

Jongin shakes his head, letting the dog’s head rest on the ground again. “Men are… cruel,” he exhales, panting.

“Yeah,” says the shopkeeper. “That’s putting it… lightly.”

“It hadn’t done anything wrong,” says Jongin, unable to stop himself from weeping. “It was hungry.”

The shopkeeper falls silent for a moment. “Hey,” he says after a while. “Are you… hungry?”

Jongin does not answer.

The man exhales heavily. “Come on. Get up.”

Jongin rises to his feet and wipes his cheeks as he half-heartedly walks out of the alley, following the man back to the shop, which he must have just closed up.

He unlocks the door and pushes it open for Jongin. “Come on inside.”

Jongin stands in the dark while the shopkeeper lights an odd-looking device. It looks like a glass container which ignites fire from the inside. Nothing like a candle.

“Sit,” says the man, jerking his chin towards the stool near the counter.

Jongin takes his seat while the shopkeeper grabs some things from the shelves.

“What did you say your name is again?” the man inquires.

“Jong… Jongin.”

“Jongin,” repeats the man. “Not a very usual name. Hard to remember.”

Jongin nods and sniffles.

The man returns to the counter with a package and a jar of preserves.

“Do you like fig jam?”

“I’ve never had it,” admits Jongin.

The man arches an eyebrow. “Never?”

Jongin shakes his head.

“Well, I’ve got some water crackers and fig jam here. If you’re hungry.”

Jongin does not refuse. He is indeed very hungry. He watches as the man unwraps the package to reveal thin yellow discs, neatly arranged in stacks.

He then pushes them across the counter towards Jongin.

Jongin helps himself to one of the crackers, then two, then three. He decides that he likes the fig jam, too. It isn’t too sweet or sour. The mild flavour of the jam, though distinct, is surprisingly palatable.

The crackers are too dry for him, however. He is grateful when the shopkeeper hands him a cup of water.

Even the water tastes different here, away from the mountain streams.

“You know,” says the man from the other side of the counter, watching Jongin slathering on some jam onto another cracker before stuffing it into his mouth. “Not many people would run away from home without any means of surviving.”

Jongin swallows and looks up at the man’s piercing green eyes. “I have… survived so far, haven’t I?”

Much to his surprise, the man smiles and even manages a small chuckle. “So far, yes.”

Jongin wipes his mouth after he is done and lowers his gaze. “Why… did you help me?”

“Should I not have?”

Jongin licks his lips. “Thank you.”

The man nods his head curtly. His shirt is a little dirty, Jongin notices. He looks tired. Jongin is tired, too. He does not know yet where he will sleep, but he is certain that he will have very little complain about it.

“Is your name… Henrik?” asks Jongin, wanting to place a name to the man.

The shopkeeper snorts. “No,” he says. “That’s my father-in-law. This was his shop before I took over.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

The man fixes Jongin with a lengthy look and sighs. “My name is Wolfram. I used to work the forge at the blacksmith.”

He walks away from the counter to adjust some jars and bottles on the shelves behind him.

Jongin’s gaze lingers a moment too long on the sides of Wolfram’s head. He quickly lowers it when the man turns to him again.

He freezes when Wolfram takes hold of his chin in a hand to inspect the side of the jaw that was struck. “It’s bruising,” he says. “Should have it looked at.”

Jongin slowly pulls away and says, “I’m fine.”

Wolfram stares at him for a moment before he clears his throat and says, “Can I get you anything else?”

Jongin does not wish to overstay his welcome or impose. He also does not want to stay long enough for Wolfram to start asking questions he cannot answer. So, he shakes his head and rises to his feet. “Thank you very much for everything. I will take my leave now.”

“Do you know where you are going?”

Jongin stops at the door and frowns. “No,” he says. “But I will… find my way.”

Wolfram sighs heavily and hangs his head for a moment. “Young people,” he groans under his breath. “So witless. So hopeful.”

When he looks at Jongin again, he says, “Would you like to stay here for the night? Or perhaps my place?”

Jongin is quiet for a length. He does not know what to say in response. Of course, he appreciates the man’s generous offer, but he also needs to stay vigilant. It most probably is not safe for him to stay somewhere for an extended period of time with a stranger, who can potentially harm him or worse expose him.

“That’s all right,” he says as politely as he can. “I do not want to trouble you.”

Wolfram does not look like he has it in him to try and convince Jongin otherwise. So, he shrugs and says, “Suit yourself.”

Jongin lets himself out.

He finds an empty wagon in an alley and climbs into it. Though it smells a little discomforting, he quickly curls up and falls asleep.

* * *

He rouses very early at dawn to the morning racket of the village. He hastily clambers out of the wagon before someone could catch him there.

More people have started to notice him as he makes his way down the street. Eyes follow everywhere he goes.

“Is he new?” someone asks.

“Looks very sketchy to me,” another says.

“He’s got that cloak on all the time.”

“I saw him yesterday, too. Just roaming around here and there, watching everyone.”

Jongin has to leave this village before he can attract any more attention. But it isn’t easy.

He needs directions. He needs supplies. To go to the nearby village.

He cannot afford to get lost on the road.

“Well, good morning,” says Wolfram when he finds Jongin perched on the steps of his shop later in the morning.

Jongin stands up and meets the man’s smirk embarrassedly.

“Hungry?” asks Wolfram as he brushes past Jongin to unlock his shop.

* * *

“Do you have a horrifying haircut or something?” the man asks once Jongin is finished with his food.

He looks up at Wolfram confusingly. “What?”

The man smiles from where he is standing on his toes, arranging sacks on the highest shelf. Jongin will not be able to reach it unless he’s on a ladder.

“You never take off that cowl,” says Wolfram.

“Oh.” Jongin tugs at the cloak. “It’s… for protection.”

“From the sun?”

“Yes,” Jongin mutters, going along with it.

Wolfram turns to him with his eyes narrowed. “Well, we’re not in the sun right now, are we?”

Jongin frowns. “Can you please tell me how to get to the next village?” he asks again.

Wolfram does not answer this time either. Instead, he leans over the counter to take a closer look at Jongin’s face.

It startles Jongin, stilling him in his place, even though he should be backing away.

Sighing, Wolfram pulls back. “You don’t know if the man you’ve come looking for will be there, do you?”

Jongin tries not to look too upset, but he isn’t very good at masking his emotions. Especially now. “I have to find him,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because… I have to,” says Jongin softly.

Wolfram pins him with a sharp look. “Where do you come from?”

Jongin stands up to leave. “If you will not tell me how to get to the next village, then I will go. Thank you once more.”

Huffing loudly, Wolfram seizes Jongin’s arm and stops him. Jongin is quick to yank his arm free, and the action shocks the man for a moment.

The shop’s door opens. “Are you open yet, Wolfram?” a woman asks as she enters.

Clearing his throat, the man smiles in her way and says, “Yes. Just entertaining a customer.”

Jongin steps aside. The woman walks past him, giving him a bitter, curious look.

“Two packs of sugar and a canister of oil, please.”

“Coming right up,” says the shopkeeper before he hurries away to fetch the woman’s order.

Jongin cannot help but stare at the woman for a moment too long. Before leaving his home, he has never encountered a woman. He tries not to gawk at her to distress her, but he is quite intrigued.

Women are not all that different from men. Sometimes, Jongin would not be able to tell the difference if it isn’t for their clothes. All that he does know – and has been taught – is that women have… curves. Noticeable, big curves. Not all of them, though.

Most of the ones he has observed the last few days are gentle and tender, their voices sweet and kind. He does not think he finds it as attractive as Pathe made it out to be.

Intrigued, yes. Interested? Unlikely.

“What are you doing this evening, Wolfram?” the woman asks the shopkeeper, leaning over his counter, grinning at him while batting her eyes. She grabs a tuft of her hair and starts twirling it between her fingers coyly. “Would you like for me to come over and cook some dinner for you? Perhaps… keep your bed warm?”

Wolfram responds with a polite smile. “My bed is warm enough, thank you, Regina. Here’s your order. That’ll be two coins.”

The woman straightens up and sighs. “You are no fun.”

She pays for the wares and leaves after winking at Wolfram and sneering at Jongin.

“I thought you were married,” says Jongin. He should not have said anything, but it is too late now.

Wolfram cocks an eyebrow at him. “When did I tell you that?”

Jongin keeps mum, lowering his head.

Exhaling heavily, Wolfram says, “My wife died many years ago.”

Pathe might have known what to say, but Jongin doesn’t. He walks over to the counter again, however, and looks at Wolfram tenderly.

“I’m sorry,” he tries saying, even though he knows that those words do not lessen a man’s grief. Or a fae’s.

Wolfram stares at him wordlessly.

Jongin finds himself saying more. “I too lost someone I loved dearly recently.”

“Is that why you left home?” asks Wolfram.

Jongin shakes his head but says nothing else.

Wolfram scratches the back of his head. “If you can be patient for two more days, I can take you there. I have some deliveries to make.”

Jongin blinks. “Really?”

“And… the offer to stay at my place still stands, if you want it.”

Jongin gnaws at his lower lip. “I will be fine on my own, thank you.”

“All right. If you say so.”

* * *

Jongin tries to stay away from Wolfram’s shop as much as he can. He does not want to distract the man from his business, and he certainly does not think it wise to stick around him any longer than he needs to.

He waits in the alley next to the shop, however. Wolfram has many customers, most of which are women, who usually leave the building giggling and blushing.

Are they hoping to be wooed by the man, Jongin wonders. Even if he still loves his wife? Would these women be willing to share the man’s heart with another person?

Jongin does not think he will ever be able to share Adrian’s heart with another.

Perhaps it is how it works with faes. Men take more than one wife, sometimes. They are capable of sharing their love. Faes aren’t.

“It’s the one from last night,” he hears someone say as the sun starts setting in the horizon, making way for the darkness of the night.

Jongin scrambles up to his feet when he sees the two men from the previous night walking towards him with a sinister grin on their faces.

And along with them, there were few other villagers.

“Who are you?!” one of them shouts at Jongin.

“I’m… I’m just a traveller,” says Jongin.

“Well, if you’re just a traveller, why are you slinking around, concealing yourself like that?” asks the man who was killed the dog last night.

Jongin looks to the woman who is holding a wooden rod in her hand. While some of the villagers look concerned, the rest look threatened.

The wind howls around Jongin.

“I-I do not want… any trouble,” says Jongin, withdrawing further into the alley. There is no way to run once the villagers block the mouth of the alleyway.

“Then take off that hood!” a woman yells. “Show us your face.”

Jongin gulps. He takes a few more steps back until he realizes there is nowhere else to go. “I c-can’t,” he mutters, hands trembling at his sides.

“Here. Let me help you,” spits the man as he starts to lunge at Jongin.

“What’s going on here?” Wolfram interferes, jostling through the crowd. He is quick to put himself between Jongin and the others, scowling annoyedly. “Leave him alone.”

“Have you gone mad, Wolfram?! A stranger from nowhere shows up at our village, and you want us to leave him alone?” says the woman. “We want him to state his business here.”

“He came looking for someone,” spits Wolfram.

“Who?”

“Some man called Adrian.”

“We don’t have anyone called Adrian here,” she says. “It’s a small village. And a safe one so far. We’d like to keep it that way.”

“He’s harmless, for fuck’s sake, Ophelia,” says Wolfram, almost growling.

“How do _you_ know that?” asks Ophelia. “Can you vouch for his innocence? What if he harms our children? The women? He cannot just come here out of nowhere and walk around with that hood on all the time. The kids are afraid!”

“Why won’t he show his face?” asks another man. He is brandishing a pitchfork.

Wolfram frowns, and his shoulders fall. Sighing, he turns to Jongin and says, “Take off that hood.”

Jongin is too petrified to move or say anything.

“Just take the damn hood off, will you?” groans Wolfram.

When Jongin does not oblige, Wolfram loses his temper, and his hand flies up to clamp around Jongin’s neck. Slamming Jongin back against the alley wall, Wolfram snarls at him before yanking the cowl of the cloak down himself.

His hand immediately loosens around Jongin’s neck, and he steps away, jaw falling slack as the rest.

Gasping, the villagers jerk back.

“What in hell is that?!” Ophelia wheezes, eyes reddening.

Jongin looks at them like a kicked pup. “Please, I do not mean any of you any harm,” he says, voice quivering.

“It’s a fae,” someone whispers in the crowd.

“Faes do not exist!” another yaps.

Jongin pants hard, pressing against the wall, as though he is hoping for it to swallow him up. “Please…”

“Seize it!” Ophelia exclaims.

“Wait!” Wolfram stands before Jongin again. He has a conflicted expression about him. “It’s not here to hurt us.”

_It?_

“You do not know that,” spits Ophelia. “Whatever it is, we have to capture it and take it to the King Hunter! He’ll know what to do with it!”

“Yes! Seize it!”

“Yes!”

“He’d even pay a handsome price for it,” says another.

Wolfram does not do anything, though he frowns and looks at Jongin anxiously, as the villagers lurch forward and seize his arms at once.

“Please, let me go!” Jongin cries, though he struggles very little against the brute strength of the villagers.


	6. Chapter 6

# C H A P T E R N I N E

Jongin does not know when or how he had passed out, but when he wakes again, he is surrounded by a dank darkness that nearly suffocates him for a moment.

He sits up and stares at the nothingness for a length before he decides to move. His wrists are bound. When he tries to stand, he is immediately hindered by the roof that bumps against his head. He drops back down to the ground with a thud.

_No… Where am I?_

He stretches his arms out and blindly touches the walls around him. It does not take him long to realize that they are made of wood. It is a confined space with not much room to move around. He cannot even stand on his knees. Where did the villagers take him?

He listens for the wind and hears nothing.

His stomach turns all of a sudden, and he lurches forward, hoping to find an exit. But he is only met with a rattling wall.

“There is no point in trying to get out, creature,” a muffled voice says from the other side of the wall. “There’s no way to escape.”

Jongin gasps. “Please,” he whimpers, his voice hoarse from all the crying and pleading. “Let me go. I do not mean any of you any harm.”

“Shut up!” is the response he receives, along with a loud, angry bang on the wall. It isn’t a wall. It is a door. A locked door.

He wonders if he is in a crate of some sort. A cage, perhaps? Or a wagon?

Once his eyes have adjusted to the darkness, he tries to look for a way to get out. The only way out is through the door, and there is no way he can unlock it from the inside.

After a few failed attempts, he curls back in a corner and hugs his knees to his chest, tears welling up in his eyes.

“What have I done…” he mutters to himself. He has walked into a lion’s den on his own account. He had chosen to disregard all of his Pathe’s teachings, advices and warnings, and look where that has brought him.

Pathe was right. Mankind is irredeemable.

“Must we do this?” he hears a familiar voice say then. Wolfram. “You saw it. It did not even fight back. I don’t think… it’s harmful.”

“You cannot vouch for its character, Wolfram,” a female voice says. It has to be Ophelia. “It is not one of us! What if it hurts one of our children? Or violates our women? Will you be the one to answer for its actions?”

Wolfram falls silent then.

“I still cannot believe that it exists,” another voice chimes in.

“It does not look… dangerous,” says Wolfram. For a brief moment, Jongin thinks that he has a chance of getting out of here.

“It’s a wild thing,” argues Ophelia. “We will take it to the King Hunter, and he will know what to do.”

“Besides,” says another man. “I imagine he might pay a pretty price for this creature, if this thing is actually only of those fae folk.”

“It clearly is. It is queer. It has those… ears! Just like my grandmother told me in her stories. She also told me that faes were bloodthirsty creatures that preyed on innocents.”

“My father has also heard stories from travellers,” says the unfamiliar voice. “They snatch people to make stew with their flesh.”

Jongin is unable to believe his ears. What malicious lies! An amused part of him even finds it all laughable. Men have such ludicrous imagination. How can he be a bloodthirsty creature? Does he sharp fangs? Poisonous claws, perhaps? Gargantuan strength? How are men this oblivious and ignorant? It is baffling.

“If you take it to the King Hunter,” says Wolfram. “he’d just mount its head on his wall.”

“If he thinks that is the best course of action,” replies Ophelia. “then that is his decision.”

Wolfram does not say anything more, but Jongin is grateful that the man at least has an ounce of compassion compared to the others.

All that he hears after that is a faint cacophony of voices in the distance.

A while later, the cage starts moving. In a panic, he crawls to the door once more. “Where are you taking me?” asks Jongin, rasping.

He receives no reply this time, even though he can still hear some of the villagers talking among themselves. His chest hurts. Actually, _everything_ hurts. Struggling seems pointless at this point, so he sits still, hugging his legs.

Who is the King Hunter? Why do the people seem to believe that he would know what to do with Jongin?

* * *

The ride is longer and harsher than Jongin has anticipated. The cage trembles and jerks too much that he nearly heaves several times. He clutches at his tunic by the belly, trying very hard to stop his head from spinning and stomach from lurching.

Has it been half a day? A night perhaps. He is hungry and tired. There isn’t enough room for him to stretch his legs.

The carriage comes to an abrupt halt, which makes him lunge forward, slamming against the barred door.

“We have to feed it!” he hears Wolfram’s exasperated growl. “It won’t be any good to us or the King Hunter dead now, would it?”

There then seems to be a discussion. Ophelia has the final say.

“Fine,” she spits. “Give it some water.”

“And something to eat,” Wolfram argues.

After a brief moment, Ophelia agrees with a grunt.

When the door opens, Jongin is too petrified to move. He does not think of running. It will be futile. Before him, there are at least ten villagers, staring confusedly at him, wielding pitchforks, cleavers and torches. Jongin’s blood runs cold.

He knows that if he tries to escape, they will not hesitate to mount his head on a pike.

Besides, he does not think he knows where to run to in the dark.

He looks at Wolfram, who is holding out a waterskin. “Here,” he says, wearing a concerned frown. “Drink this.”

Jongin regards the rope tied tightly around his wrists for a moment before reaching out for the waterskin. His thirst triumphs over fear.

“That’s enough,” Ophelia yaps, snatching the waterskin out of Jongin’s hands before his thirst is quenched. She then grabs the hunk of stale bread from Wolfram’s grip and tosses it into the cage.

Jongin has never wished ill upon anyone. Never. And he has never thought that he ever will. But what he is feeling for the spiteful woman is very close to aversion.

“Where are you from?” she asks him, sneering.

Jongin does not answer. He does not wish to speak. Especially not to her.

She is not one of the younger, perkier women. She has many strands of grey in her frizzy black hair and noticeable wrinkles on her face. Her forehead has a permanent frown on it. Her yellow teeth continue to snarl at Jongin, as though he is a threat.

“I know you can talk,” she spits at him, lifting the wooden rod in her hand. For a moment, Jongin thinks that she might hit him with it, but she refrains. “Are you one of those… fae monsters of the woods?”

Jongin cannot help but scowl then. Does he look like a _monster?_ Then he thinks of laughing. Humans are way more paranoid than he is.

And why does she bother to even ask now, after she has convinced herself and everyone in the village that he is one?

“Leave it be,” Wolfram interferes.

Someone in the crowd whispers, “Doesn’t look dangerous. Looks human.”

“Don’t fall for it. Look at its ears,” someone else replies. “It isn’t human.”

“Let’s get going,” huffs Ophelia then. “The rest of you, turn back. We’ve got it from here.”

Some of the villagers start to turn around, to head back to the village. Two men stayed back to accompany Ophelia.

Wolfram turns to Jongin with a sympathetic look. He sighs and starts to close the door. “Don’t hurt it,” he mutters to Ophelia.

“You have grown soft, Wolfram,” the woman scoffs. “What is it? Do you feel pity for it?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” asks Wolfram. “Until proven a threat, it is innocent.”

“We’ll see about that,” says Ophelia before she sends Wolfram on his way, too.

Jongin nearly calls Wolfram, begging him to help him, but he knows that effort will be pointless. This woman, Ophelia, clearly has some sort of authority over the villagers, who obey and respect her without protest.

Leaning against the cage wall, Jongin draws a deep breath before he picks up the bread and sinks a deep bite into it.

* * *

The farther he ventures from his woods, the quieter the wind is. He has never felt this lonely in forever. Even after Pathe’s death, the forest had kept him company.

The sun is rapidly climbing up the morning sky when the door opens again. This time, Ophelia flashes a wide, sadistic grin that makes Jongin shudder.

She grabs the rope that is tied around Jongin’s wrists and tugs it forward. Jongin lurches out of the cage and falls to the ground.

He grunts at his scraped knees. “On your feet now, creature,” Ophelia spits as the two men she has brought along yank Jongin up to his feet.

They are not taller than Jongin, but they are clearly stronger. Their grip on Jongin’s arms are painfully tight.

Jongin thinks of asking them where they have taken him, but the huge series of buildings and towers before him render him speechless.

He cannot believe his eyes or anything that he is seeing. The streets are bustling with people of all sizes and types. The din all around him deafens him for a length.

This place is nothing like the village. This is… overwhelming. Everything is bigger. More complicated. There are signboards in every corner. People are shouting in the streets, promoting their wares. Giggling children are running after one another. Both the men and women are dressed in neater and fancier layers than the ones back at the village. All of his senses are trounced with the horridness of it all.

The dust in the hot air makes every breath difficult to take. Jongin’s parched throat feels itchy, and his eyes burn. He wishes to return to the safety and tranquillity of his woods. He wishes for the comfort of his willow tree. He fears nothing more than uncertainty.

“Wh-Where am I?” he lets out.

No one answers him, though the two men who are holding him upright flinch when they hear him speak.

“Now,” says Ophelia, drawing the cloak over Jongin’s head. “We don’t want to attract any attention, do we?”

Jongin does not think it will be a good idea to be the centre of attention here. There are ten times as many people. No. Twenty times. Or even thirty. Everywhere he turns, he sees a new face. Not particularly one that he thinks is friendly.

“This way,” Ophelia then says, walking ahead.

Jongin isn’t sure how he is moving. Perhaps he is being dragged, or perhaps he is too distracted by everything that is going on around him to stop his feet from moving forward.

He eventually figures out that he is being forced in the direction of the biggest, scariest-looking building there. It isn’t anything like Jongin has seen thus far – and he has seen quite a lot lately.

It’s built with both wood and stone, and it stands regally on top of a stone staircase. At its sides, there are manmade streams of cascading waters. For a moment, Jongin is unable to believe his eyes when they land on the elephant tusks that adorn the pathway to the entrance. He has not come across an elephant himself, they are majestic creatures who do not live in his part of the woods, but he has heard plenty from Pathe of how men hunt those wonderful beings for their tusks before.

“Ah, yes,” says Ophelia, taking note of Jongin’s shock. “The tusks. Magnificent, aren’t they? The King Hunter acquired those himself on foreign lands.”

Jongin feels sick to the stomach. His hopes for the King Hunter to see reason are quickly dwindling. If the man is brutal enough to fell great creatures like elephants and put his horrific conquests on display, he might not be so kind to a rare creature as a fae.

“Let me go,” Jongin growls all of a sudden, trying to yank his arms free from the men’s grip. “I will not go in there! Please, I will leave. I won’t ever show myself again.”

“Stay still!” one of the men groans as Jongin tugs at his arm, shoving and wriggling agitatedly.

That is when a hand strikes his face. It does not hurt much, but it still shocks Jongin. He stops and gawks at Ophelia, who hits him again.

“Fucking fae,” she spits, drawing a blunt knife from her skirt. “Try my patience, why don’t you. I’ll cut you open myself before the King Hunter has a chance.”

Jongin pants hard, chest heaving, throat dry, eyes watery. He should fight, he thinks. What’s the worst that could happen? He is going to be harmed either way.

The men grab his arms once more while Ophelia grips a handful of his hair. “Now, behave,” she grumbles under her breath. “And I suggest you do not cause a scene.”

“This one doesn’t seem like it’s magical,” says the man as they start walking again, hauling Jongin with them. “I heard faes were magical.”

“It’s clearly hiding its magic,” says the other man.

“Hush,” Ophelia quietens them as they approach the gates of the stairs. There are two big men standing guard outside the gates, holding terrifying-looking rods with metal heads.

“State your business,” one of them says to Ophelia gruffly.

“I wish to have an audience with my liege, the King Hunter,” she says, bowing her head a little.

“You cannot see him without an official business,” says the guard.

Ophelia clears her throat and closes the distance between her and the man. “You see,” she says, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at Jongin. “I have brought something with me that could be of the King Hunter’s interest.”

The guard looks at Jongin and arches an eyebrow after sizing him from head to toe with a disapproving moue. “I don’t think the King Hunter would appreciate having your whores solicit at his doorstep,” he says, and the two men, who are holding Jongin fast, break into a low chuckle.

“Shh!” Ophelia hisses at them before facing the guard again. “Trust me. This one is better than a whore.” She pulls the cloak from Jongin’s head.

The guards gasp as their eyes bulge out. “What trickery is this?!” one of them bays.

“It is no trick of mine,” says Ophelia. “We found him, lurking about our village, looking for his next victim.”

Jongin grimaces. If he isn’t so terrified to speak, he would have called the horrid woman out on her stupidity.

“I’m sure you would not want to turn us away and risk having the King Hunter hold you accountable for it,” says Ophelia.

The guards waste no time in opening the gates for them. While one of them stays behind to guard the gates, the other ushers them upstairs and guides them toward the elephant-tusk pathway.

“He is going to be thrilled,” mutters Ophelia, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m certain he’ll reward us generously for it.”

“What is… he going to do to me?” asks Jongin, still struggling to break free from the men’s grip.

“Mount your head on a wall, brew potions with your blood, bend and breed you until you bleed, whatever he wishes to do with you, you cursed thing,” she says so repulsively. Jongin’s ears ring.

His heart is thundering in his chest with every step they advance toward the barred doors of the enormous house. He knows that if he enters that place, he will never be able to leave. He will never be free again.

So, he decides that he’d much rather die trying to get away now than be tormented by this cruel King Hunter.

He yanks his arms again, a foot coming up to stomp on one of the men’s stomach. Ophelia yaps and lunges at him with her meat knife. Jongin dodges it by an inch as he drives an elbow into the second man’s face. He grunts when he drops to the ground, quickly trying to scramble back up to its feet.

“It’s feral!” Ophelia cries to the guard, who staggered forward with his weapon. Even though it resembled a slim rod, it was made of heavy wood that knocks Jongin back to the ground when it strikes a side of his head.

He stops for a moment as the world spins around him. His eyes turn blurry, and he hears his blood drum in his ears.

He stands on all fours, gasping hard for breath. He reaches up, trying to grab onto someone to pull himself up, but a second blow sends him completely to the ground.

He has never experienced anything quite like it, so he doesn’t really understand what is happening or how to recover from it.

As his vision rapidly blurs and his breath shortens, he feels more panic rising in his chest. His body, however, does not harbour the strength to do anything about it. It feels almost lethargic and weary. Like it is anticipating defeat.

“Do not kill it!” he hears Ophelia’s grating voice fade into the background. “It is no good to any of us dead!”

Jongin feels himself curl up on the ground as the pain throbs in his head. Slowly, the world is darkening around him.

He then hears a loud noise. His bleary eyes manage to catch a hazy sight of the colossal doors opening. He sees a few blurry figures approach. The biggest among them is strutting towards him with a very angry and displeased attitude – his fists balled tightly, shoulders squared. Unfortunately, it is all that Jongin takes note of before his vision gives out completely.

“What is going on here? Who are you people?” a gruff voice demands.

Jongin’s heart lurches as nothingness surrounds him. He isn’t sure if his senses are playing tricks on him, but he would pick that voice out in any crowd.

“My Liege,” someone rasps.

There is silence. A very long one.

The next and final thing that Jongin feels before he surrenders to the ineluctable unconsciousness is a pair of thick, strong, strangely familiar arms, which wrap around his limp, collapsed body, lifting it from the ground and engulfing in a tight, firm and warm embrace with a beating heart.

* * *

It is the crisp smell of food that draws Jongin back to sentience. He rouses with a grumbling stomach and a spinning head. Although his belly feels like that of a wild animal’s which hasn’t eaten in days, the rest of his body is worn to a frazzle. He cracks an eye open to greet the surprisingly calming darkness. He knows he isn’t back in his hut. It doesn’t smell like the forest here. He is lying on something far softer and comfier than his pallet back home. Everything is warm, everything is cosy. Feathery. He almost considers going back to sleep.

But the food sitting on the small, round table nearby is too inviting – it makes his mouth water.

He sits up, very slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements that would result in disagreeable consequences. He glances around the room. It is very big and very spacious. It is all that he can register for the time being in the darkness, which he is thankful for. He would love to eat something before doing anything else.

As he reaches for the food on the bedside table, he realizes that there is bread. It was soft to touch and warm, unlike the stale, hard breads he had tasted the last few days. It comes apart easily, like cotton. When he finally takes a bite, he understands why Adrian loves it so much. It tastes divine!

Out of all men’s unconceivable inventions that Jongin has lately came across, this has to be the greatest.

He pays very little attention to the rest of the platter as he wolfs down on the bread down to the last morsel. It is more food than he has ever had in his life, and there is more!

There are fruits in all colours and shapes and sizes, some of which Jongin does not recognize. There are blocks of something yellow and white, and they smell pungent. He omits them and treats himself to a handful of fruits instead.

Just as he pops a golden-coloured berry into his mouth, a creaking sound halts him in place. He looks to the sudden gush of light that blinds him momentarily.

The next thing he hears is a loud clang that leaves his ears ringing. He flinches and crawls to the furthest end of the bed, gawking at the tall, plump woman who had dropped a tray of more food.

“It’s awake,” she gasps in horror, and Jongin isn’t sure if she is talking about him. She then turns around and runs away, as though she is set on fire, screaming, “It’s awake!”

Jongin is as horrified as she is. He doesn’t move for a moment while his heart pounds rowdily in his chest. Now that he is completely awake and full, he wonders where he is.

Suddenly, he remembers what happened before he passed out.

The woman, Ophelia, had brought him to see someone called the King Hunter. There was a scuffle before Jongin received a blow so hard and unforgiving to his head and conked out.

When he woke up, he was in this dark room, cosied under a thick, feathery eiderdown, accompanied by a platter full of delicious food.

He glances to the food again and gulps. Is it poisoned? Has he foolishly fallen into another trap? He will not even be surprised at this point. Mankind is shallower and more terrifying than what Pathe believed.

He climbs off the bed and looks around for a beat before he takes a step towards the door the woman has left open when she scurried away, screaming in panic.

But he isn’t in shackles, and he isn’t trapped in a locked wagon. Perhaps he can find a way to escape.

As soon as he steps out of the door, he gasps in shock and jumps before looking down at the furry red floor. It stretches as far as Jongin can see.

There is no one in the hallway, thankfully.

Jongin looks to his left and right before he decides to go right. The carpeted floor is strange to walk on, but more comfortable than the tarred roads. He realizes that the soles of his feet are blistered from having been dragged on those roads.

His clothes are also torn in places and a side of his head is still throbbing painfully. It doesn’t matter right now. He has to find a way out before someone finds him.

He slows to a stop, however, when he notices the décor adorning the walls on either side. He cranes his head up and blinks.

He holds his breath as he realizes what he is looking at.

He clasps a hand over his mouth, as though to halt himself from heaving everything he has just eaten.

He staggers back and bumps against the opposite wall. Turning out, he looks up at the mountain lion head mounted on the wall. Blood rushes to his every recess of his body, and he is all of a sudden overwhelmed with a sickening nausea that makes the world spin around him.

He turns around and looks at the deer head again before noting the countless animal heads, antlers and pelts that are hanging all over the hallway. Bears, moose, bulls, deer, lions, tigers.

Jongin has never been an elf who would ever resort to violence in any circumstance, but he is unexpectedly overcome by a strong urge to drive a sharp knife into whoever that has committed such an unforgivable evil.

Before he knows it, tears are streaming down his cheeks. The horror, the monstrosity he is surrounded with make it very difficult for him to breathe or do anything but sob.

Who could ever take pleasure in such devilry?

Jongin is unable to move. He stands frozen to the ground, too afraid to take another step.

It is why he is brought here, to the King Hunter. So that his head could also be mounted on these walls.

The filth, the grotesque, the perversion of mankind. Jongin was wrong to believe, even for a heartbeat, that there was good in men. He never should have left his home. He never should have trusted the rest of the world to be as kind as his forest is.

He is so stunned and rooted to the ground that he does not hear the footsteps approaching him.

It isn’t until his arms are seized by two large, strong men does he move again.

“Let me go!” he cries, face covered in tears. “Or just kill me already!”

He readies himself to receive another blow to the head, but the men groan instead. One of them eventually says, “Stop fighting. We have orders not to hurt you, so do not tempt us.”

Jongin does not care. He is determined to fight now. Even if it will get him killed. Men do not deserve compassion. They are cruel and heartless!

“Let’s go,” says the man. “The king would like to see you now that you are awake.”

Jongin does not obey. He struggles to break free as he is dragged down the hallway. He wishes that he could clench his eyes shut as to not to see all the horror he is surrounded by.

“It’s feral,” one of the men grunts when Jongin tries to elbow him in the face. “Does the king really not want it in a cage or a leash?”

Jongin stops for a moment, imagining himself in a cage and a leash. It sends a shudder down his spine.

“I am not feral,” he yaps at the men. “If there’s anyone who’s wild here, it’s you men!”

The guards pause in the tracks and eye him dubiously. Then scowling at his ears, they tighten their grip around his arms and haul him faster.

Just as they reach a door at the end of the hallway, Jongin violently pulls back and manages to free one of his arms before slamming it against one guard’s face while the other is pushing the door open. That earns him a hard slap across the face. Fortunately, it isn’t the side that is already hurting.

Jongin is terrified to find out what his face must look like now, after all the bruises he has recently received.

“Now, come on, you bloody creature,” spits the guard, dragging Jongin into the room by the scruff.

Jongin stumbles and groans as the man grips the back of his neck a little too hard. He is quickly distracted by the intramural details of the room. Its walls and ceiling are predominantly made of dark wood ledges. The tall ceiling forms an arch, which has intricate crystal and metal mechanisms hanging from it, holding little oil lamps and beeswax candles.

The floor is a vast empty space, and the walls are decorated with different parts of all sorts of animals. The room reeks of a stench that makes Jongin’s head swirl.

He lurches and tries to break free again before the guards ferociously shove him forward. Loosing his footing, Jongin drops to the ground.

“Stop,” he hears a gruff voice say furiously and it echoes through the morbid-looking room. Jongin turns his head at once at looks to the large figure that stands up from the enormous, regal chair made of curling and twisting wood, fashioned in a manner that makes Jongin’s blood run cold.

He looks at the booted feet first, because it is all that he can see from the ground. Tears are still falling from his eyes unchecked, but he is no longer gasping for air between sobs. He doesn’t think that he is even breathing at all. He is too afraid to lift his head now.

It has to be the King Hunter. The monster behind all of this irremissible barbarity.

He seems to be accompanied by a woman clad in a very extravagant dress, unlike the ones the women were wearing in the village. She rises from her own seat next to the King Hunter.

Their conversation has just been interrupted by Jongin’s untimely arrival.

“My dear,” the woman rasps in disbelief. “So, it _is_ true… It is a bloodthirsty fae.”

“He isn’t… bloodthirsty,” says… says…

Jongin blinks as his ears finally stop ringing and he realizes that the hesitant but deep, hoarse, demanding voice sounds so painfully familiar.

He freezes as a pair of familiar hands come around his shoulders, very gently. Without a single breath, he finally raises his head and looks up.

It isn’t what he had imagined their undecided reunion would be. He had dreamed that it would be magical, explosive. That he would finally find peace when it happens. The cathartic moment that would bring him happiness at last.

Instead, he is met with an incredibly worried set of hazel eyes, that had once regarded Jongin with affection and want. It must have been a dream.

“Are you… all right?” the man asks, his voice so low that it comes out as a rough whisper.

Jongin is unable to look away, and so is Adrian. His hands holding Jongin’s arms are the only thing preventing Jongin from falling face first back onto the ground. All fight has left his body otherwise, and he is in a state of inescapable trance. If it isn’t for the various kinds of pain, he might have thought that he has finally died.

The trance only breaks when the woman speaks in a shaky voice. “Adrian,” she hisses, sounding like she is out of breath. “Step away from it. We do not know what disease it might carry or worse, if it is cursed!”

Adrian is not listening to her. He is staring, unblinkingly, into Jongin’s eyes, eyebrows furrowed in a deep frown of concern. Jongin, on the other hand, isn’t sure he can ever recover from _this_ blow.

“My Liege,” calls one of the guards. “It is a feral creature. It has already attacked many of our guards. It should be kept in a cage.”

“Yes,” the woman says. “Bring in a cage forthwith! And put it in shackles.”

Adrian looks like he wants to hold Jongin’s face, but his hands are shivering reluctantly around Jongin’s arms. He closes his eyes then and sucks in a deep breath.

Then releasing Jongin, he rises back to his full height. Jongin drops onto the floor again, and he doesn’t plan on getting up ever. He wants the ground the swallow him up whole and bury him.

“He isn’t dangerous,” he hears Adrian say quietly.

“It is a… creature of legends, Adrian,” says the woman. She has her hands on Adrian’s chest now. “In our home!”

Under any other circumstance, Jongin might have concentrated a little more on what she looks like, but right now, there is very little that he can do.

“It has made its way all the way here,” she adds. “What if there’s more like it? What if they are all coming here? Savages.”

 _Savages?_ Faes?

Jongin would have laughed at the irony if only he isn’t so heartbroken to the point of no return.

If this is what betrayal feels like, he will never wish it upon even his worst enemy.

“He isn’t an animal,” says Adrian. “He talks, doesn’t he? He mostly looks like us, doesn’t he?”

The woman looks shocked. “How are you so calm about this?! I must write to my father at once. This is insanity!” She starts to walk away but stops suddenly, looking at Jongin again with plenty of fear and disgust in her face. She then carefully makes her way around Jongin in a safe distance before she hurries out of the room, ordering a guard to follow her.

Adrian then turns to the other guard in the room. “Leave us,” he orders.

“But… Your Grace,” the man says. “Perhaps I should stay. Just in case.”

“I said, leave us,” Adrian then growls aggressively, and the guard hurtles away, closing the massive doors behind him.

As soon as they are left alone, Adrian drops to his knees and collects Jongin’s limp and nearly broken body into his arms. Jongin is unmoving in the desperate embrace for a long moment while Adrian buries his face in a side of Jongin’s neck.

“I cannot believe you are really here,” he mutters in a cracking voice, as though there is a lump in his throat. “This feels… surreal.”

 _This_ feels surreal?

“I have missed you,” says Adrian. “Every single day. I am nearly driven to madness. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. I’m sorry I left.”

Jongin isn’t sure if he has stopped crying a moment ago, but he is crying again now. Very silently. He helplessly presses his wet face against Adrian’s wide shoulder and slowly raises his hands to cling onto the man’s shirt at his back.

Jongin recognizes the smell of Adrian’s skin. He remembers the rhythm of Adrian’s heartbeat and the roughness of his beard. He remembers the callused hands and strong arms. His melting embrace and warm touch. It really is him.

And Jongin has never been more disappointed.

When Adrian pulls back from the embrace and cups Jongin’s face in his hands, Jongin doesn’t meet his eyes. He can’t. There is just so much pain he simply isn’t able to accept what has just unravelled before him.

“Oh…” Adrian exhales, his thumb lightly brushing a spot on Jongin’s cheek. It hurts, so Jongin winces. It must be a bruised spot. “You shouldn’t have come here, Jongin.”

And he is absolutely right. Even so, Jongin feels a never-before-felt rage and grief inside him. Those are not the words he had expected to hear when he would be in Adrian’s arms again. The cuts just keep on coming, and Jongin is now exhausted. He wants to go to sleep, and possibly never wake up.

Serves him right for not heeding Pathe’s warning.

He had ignored everything the old fae, who had been like a father to him, had taught him about mankind, and look where it has brought him.

His hands fall from Adrian’s back, and he hangs his head tiredly.

“Jongin,” calls Adrian, trying to gently lift Jongin’s chin. “Won’t you… speak to me?”

What will he even say? Oh, he wishes that he could tell the man just how broken he is at this point, but he doesn’t even have the right words for it.

Adrian searches for Jongin’s eyes once more, hands holding Jongin’s head up. “Jongin,” he lets out piteously and desperately.

When the fae does not respond, Adrian stands back up, lifting Jongin up with him in his arms. Jongin does not fight it. He does not have a single ounce of strength or the will to do anything left in him.

So he lays dormant in Adrian’s arms as he is carried out of the hall.

* * *

He isn’t back in the room he woke up in previously. He is lying on a bigger, slightly harder bed. The pillow his head is resting on, however, is as soft as loam after rainfall.

He immediately regrets his awakening, because all at once, he registers the pain he is in – both the physical and the emotional. But he is no longer wearing his own clothes. Instead, he is clad in a single tunic with the lower part of his body covered under an eiderdown.

He inspects the tunic briefly. It isn’t roughspun like the clothes he owns. It is silky and soft, and he can barely feel it against his skin. Remarkable.

He tries not to cry as he presses a hand to his slightly bloated belly. What has he done? He should be punished for his wrongs, for trusting a man, for relinquishing his virtues for a monstrous, remorseless man. But what has the innocent life done? Jongin was wrong to think that the baby would need Adrian. No. He is the furthest thing either of them need.

All of his senses must be knackered because he does not notice the other presence in the room until later.

He slowly flips around on the bed and looks to the massive curtained window where Adrian is standing with his hands tied at his back, facing out the window, lost in his thoughts.

He turns when he hears Jongin shifting on the mattress.

So, it hasn’t all been just a horrible nightmare.

Adrian looks a little different now. His beard is not as long or unkempt. It is trimmed neatly. And his hair is shorter, but still long enough to fall over his eyes. He is clad in a simple black shirt, tucked into his black trousers, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the top laces undone, along with a pair of black boots. He is also sporting wide black leather bands around both wrists. He also looks bigger, more muscular since the last time Jongin has seen him. He is nothing like the weak, wounded man Jongin had found washed up on the riverbank a long time ago.

Jongin sits up, wincing, and leans back against the headboard of the bed, hugging the eiderdown to his chest. His heart is beating uncontrollably again.

On the bright side, he has found Adrian a lot sooner than he had expected to. The betrayal and grief would have only been worse if Jongin had discovered the truth about the man after years of searching for him.

“Jongin,” Adrian calls, and Jongin looks at him with a fatigued gaze. The man swallows and crosses his arms over his chest. “Why have you… come here?”

Jongin has seen enough in the last few days that men, even those like Adrian apparently, enjoy inflicting pain on those who are faultless.

Jongin isn’t exactly faultless. He had willingly trusted a man, hasn’t he? The repercussions of his momentary lapse in judgment will now follow him for the remainder of his life.

Part of him does not even want to talk to this man, anymore. But in the heart of his heart, he still knows that he loves Adrian. Helplessly so.

“You should not have come here,” mutters Adrian, clenching his eyes for a moment.

Jongin finally finds his voice and some courage to speak. “Wh-Who… are you… really?” he asks in broken whispers.

Adrian opens his eyes and draws a deep breath. He walks over to the bed and takes a seat on its edge. He frowns when Jongin flinches away from him.

“I won’t hurt you, Jongin,” he says.

Jongin swallows a sob. “I am not sure… I believe that,” he says.

Adrian looks heartbroken then. He hangs his head, shoulders slumped. “That fateful day,” he says after a long stretch of silence. “when you found me in the river… I was… on a hunt with my hunting party. I was ambushed by bandits. Before I could react, I was hurt. Everything else that had happened is but a vague memory now.”

He raises his head and briefly glances to Jongin.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he continues. “because… you would have hated me.”

Jongin finds it very hard to hold back the sob now. “So… you _are_ the King Hunter? This… terrible place is your _home_?”

Adrian huffs out a breath and nods. “It’s who I _was_ ,” he says. “I haven’t been that man since… since you, Jongin. I swear.”

Jongin still feels like he is going to throw up. He hugs his legs and rests his forehead on his knees. “All men are flawed,” he whispers quietly.

“What?”

“All men are flawed. You told me that once.”

They sit in silence for a length.

Jongin wonders how much he can trust Adrian again.

“I cannot believe you left your forest,” Adrian says eventually, breaking the silence. “Why?”

Jongin brings his head up to pin the man with a watery gaze. “Do you… really not know why?”

Adrian purses his lips and turns his face away again. “You shouldn’t have come looking for me. I left for a reason. I couldn’t stay.”

“In the woods?”

“With you,” corrects Adrian, and it only hurts Jongin more.

“Why… Why not?” asks Jongin, sounding more piteous than he wants to.

Adrian rubs his forehead. “Because I have responsibilities here,” he says. “I have to look over my people. It isn’t anything you’d really understand, but I can’t just do whatever I want.”

He is right. Jongin does not understand.

Swallowing hard, he reaches out for Adrian’s arm.

Adrian shudders when Jongin’s fingers curl around his elbow. He looks sharply at Jongin before his gaze softens.

“Adrian,” Jongin lets out, tears welling up in his eyes once more.

He doesn’t know what has gotten into Adrian then, but the man lunges at him, pins him against the headboard, cups a side of his face firmly in a hand, and smashes their lips together.

Jongin entangles his fingers in the undone laces of Adrian’s shirt while Adrian kisses him aggressively, leaving no room for either of them to catch their breath. Not that it matters.

As Adrian accidentally presses a hand to Jongin’s stomach before taking hold of his waist, Jongin mewls softly against his lips. Grabbing the sides of his waist then, Adrian pulls Jongin away from the headboard and plops him onto the mattress.

Although shocked and flabbergasted, Jongin does nothing to stop the man. Without breaking the kiss, Adrian mounts him and pins his wrists to the mattress.

When he finally disconnects their mouths, Jongin seizes the opportunity to suck in a few gulps of air while Adrian presses gentle and cautious kisses on the sides of Jongin’s face that are bruised.

Jongin gasps lightly and arches into the man when he moves his attention to the neck, peppering it with soft kisses while his beard contrastingly pricked.

Jongin certainly does not recall Adrian being this rough and eager before. His urgent kisses are almost painful, but not to the point where Jongin would complain.

He is finally being held by Adrian, and he’d nearly lost all hope.

“Adrian,” he moans, clenching his fists that are being held down.

Adrian eventually released one of Jongin’s wrists to use the hand to hastily yank his pants’ laces loose. He then shoves the eiderdown aside and draws Jongin’s tunic up before grabbing his thigh, positioning himself between Jongin’s legs.

Jongin goes still for a moment, realizing Adrian is not planning on stopping and taking him right then and there.

“Adrian,” Jongin rasps then. He doesn’t think Adrian is listening because he grabs Jongin’s hand again and holds it firmly against the mattress. “Wait. Stop, please.”

Adrian stops then and pulls back, looking at Jongin impatiently. “Am I hurting you?” he asks, although he doesn’t look like he wants to go any gentler.

Jongin shakes his head and licks his lips. “No, but… I can’t do this… now.”

Adrian blinks and lets out a couple of heavy breaths, as though he is sobering up again. Then cursing under his breath, he completely releases Jongin and sits up, planting his head in his hands.

“What am I doing?” he mutters to himself.

Jongin pulls his tunic down and kneels up behind Adrian on the bed. “It’s… all right,” he says.

Adrian scoffs then, and it is a cruel sound. Jongin goes silent. “Look at you. After everything you’ve gone through, after everything _I’ve_ put you through… Even after learning the truth about me, you can’t even stay mad at me.”

Jongin has never found that quality a flaw. His nature is to be forgiving and kind to all.

“I haven’t… forgiven you,” he mutters, however. “But you said that… you are not the same man anymore,” he says.

“That doesn’t mean I’m a _good_ man now,” spits Adrian. He rises from the bed and laces up again. “You have to leave. Before anyone else tries to hurt you. Thank God, they brought you here to me. Or things could have gone a lot worse for you.”

He runs a hand through his hair and straightens up with his hands at the sides of his waist, his chest still heaving.

“You… want me to… leave?” asks Jongin, throat tightening around a lump.

Adrian turns away from him. “There is nothing more I can do for you.”

“Why?” He is about to break down again.

“Because this is where I belong, Jongin,” he says exasperatedly now. “But this is not where you belong. If you stayed, they’d cut you up, dissect you into pieces and use you for experiments and witchcraft.”

Jongin shivers. “But… I’d have you here.”

Adrian faces him again then. He frowns apologetically. “No, you won’t. I am married, Jongin. I have a wife.”

Jongin goes completely cold.

“I will see to it that you go back to your forest safe and sound,” says Adrian as he starts for the door. “But do not expect anything else from me.”

As Adrian shuts the door behind him, Jongin sits there in the dark of the night, unmoving and unfeeling.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, commenting, leaving kudos!


End file.
